You can change keyboards! I’m using SwiftKey, which is the smartest swipe keyboard for iOS. And it works pretty well, especially when you get used to the predictive aspects of it.
In fact, I’m typing with it now. Trying to type blog posts on my iPhone has always been a huge hassle, but SwiftKey makes it easier, at least for most things. Long words are harder; I have to pick them out letter by letter (which is how I typed everything until about half an hour ago.)
So there you go.