Does anybody know where to get one, as quite frankly, Microsoft's effort is pants.

Qwerty was designed for two-handed typing on a full-sized, old-fashioned typewriter and is absolutely useless on a modern phone.

You can't replace the keyboard in Windows Phone, but personally I find the swipe-able keyboard in Windows Phone 8.1 excellent.

Have you had other smartphones? I've always found the Windows Phone keyboards to be the best out there having tried iOS and Android ones.

I'd rank non-swype as:

1. WP
2. iOS
3. Android

For swype:

1. WP
2. Android
3. iOS (doesn't have it)