Clicks Communicator
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The nostalgia is real as a new phone, the Clicks Communicator, sparks debate with its retro Blackberry-inspired design and physical keyboard. Some commenters, like SunshineTheCat, reminisce about their past typing experiences on devices like the Palm Treo, while others, like garciasn, argue that autocorrect has made precise typing a thing of the past. As the discussion unfolds, some users praise the device's innovative features, such as its customisable notification LED and unified inbox, while others, like LunicLynx, wish it came with a silver bullet against invasive social media apps. The conversation takes a humorous turn when memoriuaysj pokes fun at the idea that users can't resist installing TikTok, highlighting the ongoing tension between device design and user agency.
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Probably just a me problem, but I feel like I've never been able to get any good at typing on a screen keyboard no matter how long I do it.
That said, I may consider this just for the fact that I won't have to retype/correct every other word in a text lol.
Once I stopped worrying about what keys I was hitting I was able to type just as fast as when I was using my Sidekick with full Qwerty back in the days before iPhone.
- PKB (check) with gestures / navigation (check) - Customisable, colour notification LED (check) - Unified inbox (check).
So far though only BB got all of it right though - very curious how this one works out.
what will stop you then from keeping your existing TikTok phone after buying this?
You do you. It was ment as a glimmer of hope for society at large.
And because of this it’s just another android phone. And it fails (will) because the screen ratio does not work for those apps.
This would be awesome if it would just be that a „communicator“ meaning a device that allows to communicate.
Think remarkable vs all the other e-ink android tablets.
The clicks keyboard does not have ctrl, arrows, page up, down or really any special keys so I’m not sure it would be that much more pleasant. I know iOS keyboard has been quite meh in the recent releases but for thumb typing I’m not convinced that physical keyboard are superior.
I'm missing having LED colours for notifications on my current phone.
> As a real keyboard with the QWERTY layout, Communicator supports languages that use the Latin alphabet: [...] Russian
Weird
Yes there are various schemes for transliterating Russian into latin script, which people occasionally use for various reasons like typing on a computer or phone which hasn't been fully configured for use with Russian language, in contexts where unicode isn't supported or to make street signs legible for tourists. That's different from the "Russian Latin alphabet". In most cases where proper Cyrillic is problematic dedicated "Russian Latin alphabet" that's based on Latin with extra diacritic marks would also be problematic.
Similar thing could be said about other languages like Japanese or Chinese, but I don't think anyone would describe them as "languages that use the Latin alphabet".
As for typing on keyboard the main Russian layout is nothing like qwerty. Computer keyboards sold in relevant regions often have dual labels. I personally never learned touch typing in Cyrillic and use the phonetic layout in the rare cases I need to do so since for me it was a second foreign language.
Which exact approach Click chose - who knows. Will it be possible to choose your preferred Russian layout like on a desktop computer? Likely not. If they supported that I would have expect them to also add layouts for more languages. Although maybe they didn't want to promise anything for languages for which they don't have OS UI translations.
Key word - variant
you can fight that, and lose (no market)
or accept second device status (for werk) and optimize that use case
the power user base you mention is probably too small to sustain them long term
not sure if that makes them a power user
why do you equate second device with digital detox?
what happened to use the best tool for the job? use a phone with a physical keyboard when chatting on WhatsApp and then switch to a regular phone for Instagram and browsing web. not saying everybody should do this but if chatting is your life...
some people even use a phone and a laptop at the same time, they are already a second device person, so they could be a three device person
If they are willing to pay quite a lot over alternative smartphones, wait half a year to have it delivered, then sit down for roughly two weeks, forcing themselves to slowly touch type so as to build the muscle memory required to actually be able to type on a Clicks then I'd say they are more than likely power users and dedicated ones willing to sacrifice quite a lot of convenience for quite a long time.
Nowadays I easily get 80wpm on my Clicks, but it took a while and I can assure you, anyone who doesn't have a true need for a physical keyboard on a smartphone in 2026, something they know they'll get a benefit from if they can type faster and without looking, they won't spend more than a minute trying it.
Heck, Michael Fisher, one of the cofounders said, for this very reason: "If you only give yourself 5 minutes with it you might as well not even bother. Getting into a physical keyboard takes time" [0]
Be honest, for a secondary device that is a massive effort to invest.
> [...] use a phone with a physical keyboard when chatting on WhatsApp and then switch to a regular phone for Instagram and browsing web [...]
But, again, Clicks has been making cases for regular phones for years now, which allow this far better than carrying a dedicated phone with a second contract alongside a phone solely for media consumption.
If you want a physical keyboard and also want the 21:9-16:9 aspect ratio of most smartphones, use a Clicks case. No need for a second device.
And once, like me, you've actually invested the effort, once you've gotten used to a Clicks and are reliant on it, you'll likely not want a device without it, so again, the idea that someone buys and uses a Clicks Communicator alongside a regular smartphone without a Clicks cases is not really realistic for me. If I am browsing social media or the web, I now want a reliable keyboard that doesn't steal screen real estate just as much as when I am working on a document.
Basically, Clicks enabled phones are devices that encourages users to become dependent on a unique input approach and thus make switching to devices without the keyboard less pleasant. In other words, Clicks, in my opinion, is detrimental to a two phone lifestyle, unless both phones have Clicks.
> some people even use a phone and a laptop at the same time, they are already a second device person, so they could be a three device person
By that logic the average person nowadays is a fifteen+ device person, but I suspect you know this conversation is focused on within a device category.
Regardless of the viability of the second device category, what is confirmed in the Youtube comments, on Reddit and here on Hacker News, is that this secondary device approach has muddled their communication and confused potential customers.
If you are faced with questions like "Is this also a phone" and "Can I use this on its own", you have not communicated what you are doing properly and no matter how large the alleged second device market is, you can't reach them either if these are unclear even for your previous customers.
[0] https://youtu.be/e2n2ftM-MwI?si=IUf1fZuLlegPYXgW&t=409
but if it's like using a Dvorak and a Qwerty at the same time, it makes sense it should be the only device
I've been using a lightphone for 3 years but i can't stand the touch screen and only having SMS is annoying.
If necessary I use a piece of paper for maps.
I am always reluctant to jump on with these independent ambitious projects. The first version is understandably rough, and the company seems to fold before they get to a second or third version.
But maybe advances in manufacturing in China are making high-quality, small-batch products like this more tractable?
I don’t know - it feels to me that this is evidence that there _isn’t_ sufficient demand to sustain a successful product like this.
if you really want a low-noise phone, it's pretty easy to accomplish in both iOS and Android. both operating systems have lots of preferences to tune your notifications to eliminate most of them. i have no problem setting up my phone in a way that doesn't alert for anything other than a real person (not a computer system) who is trying to message me specifically.
No, there demand is negligible. It's just typical hacker news people who want to suddenly become productive Silicon Valley trope hustle style, or people who want to change their damaging habits in a day, so instead of uninstalling TikTok which takes 15 seconds to do, they will spend money a separate device.
Although the keyboard may be useful.
Because it impacts ARPU. It's really not that difficult, you're the product being sold.
The Razr 2024/25 + the clicks keyboard is probably the "best" so far. Although I just got a Zinwa Q25. Amazing how good that formfactor feels after having candy bars this long.
> Cameras
> Rear: 50MP OIS
> Front: 24MP
Honestly, this sounds like a great deal
It does seem like a great deal either way though!
It does not merely feel that way; it often is. That is because megapixels measure the dimensions of the files the camera generates (this is not the same as resolution) and as such are almost the worst measure of camera quality.
Boring tech websites like comparing megapixels, because that is a number, and that allows people who do not know how cameras work to review products and have opinions without actually using them. Truth is that pixels, a measure of resolution, have been irrelevant for years when one is not printing them huge or looking at them full-size on gigantic computer monitors. More or less nobody is doing that these days; they're looking at them a few inches wide on their phones or tablets, usually via [insert social app] that downsizes and compresses the shit out of them to save on bandwidth & storage.
Things like
* colour rendition * contrast rendition * low-light ability * speed of operation (allows you to get a photo in the first place) * and more things I could name
...are all far more important to what makes a good camera on a phone. If more people were like you and actually LOOKED AT THE PHOTOS we might have ended up with much better cameras than we have now.
What makes me suspicious is the Gmail icon instead of a generic email app.
So if I have my own email server, does that mean no mail? Or would there be one Gmail app and another separate email client? Unclear.
You can disable the Gmail app and install something like Thunderbird seeing as this is just a normal Android phone (which, of course, will also show you your Gmail emails if you set it up to do so).
First, typing was actually slower and more error prone. Even nearly a year into owning it, I was constantly misclicking and spending loads of time correcting myself.
Second, you loose a ton of navigate functionality with the hardware keyboards. Holding space to navigate between characters is gone. Emojis are gone. GIF keyboards are gone.
Third, none of the apps are built for this aspect ratio or screen size. Often this is just an annoyance - but there are times this became an actual, legitimate blocker. Items would be laid out off screen in a way that you couldn’t access them. The solution: a scaled view where everything was ridiculously tiny.
Three B: too many situations where the virtual keyboard would come up and you’d literally have the entire screen covered.
I didn’t realize how much value I lose with these issues until I experienced them. Every thing you’ve relied on essentially become unreliable because you might not be able to use certain functionality.
As to the rest - I owned one of every model of BlackBerry's Android PKB phones and none of this was an issue, so I'd say a lot of it may be Unihertz's execution. Losing navigation functionality with a PKB? That's shocking, you should have _gained_ advantage rather than lost anything.
Makes me almost happy I haven't gone for a Unihertz when my last Key2 croaked.
What I discovered was that the best BB keyboards for error-free typing were the curved 4-row keyboards on the Bold 9000, 9700 and 9900. The Passport kb was flat, rectangular and only had 3 rows over a very wide layout and placed at the very bottom of the phone, making it cramped to type on. I love the idea of keyboard phones but only BB of yore did it right.
it sounds like there is a slow and steady open source community around either replacement q20 keyboards, or a reverse-engineered one? https://hackaday.com/2025/06/04/the-blackberry-keyboard-how-...
and the beepy, which runs linux and for some reason has the keyboard blurred out on its homepage https://beepy.sqfmi.com/
Trademark stuff, as far as I remember.
> For instance, the Beepberry project became Beepy – because of Blackberry, legally speaking, raising an eyebrow at the naming decision; it’s the kind of legal situation we’ve seen happen with projects like Notkia. If you ever get such a letter, please don’t hold any hard feelings towards the company – after all, trademarks can legally be lost if the company doesn’t take action to defend them. From what I gather, BlackBerry’s demands were low, as it goes with such claims – the project was renamed to Beepy going forward, and that’s about it.
I think to poke fun at it, they blur out the keeb haha
One notable app that also failed this way was, the irony, the Work suite, soon owned by... BlackBerry. My dear employer dropped BES support and moved to Work, which didn't work on BBs after some time, and that was the end of it (BBOS) for me.
Only BB did it right, but - and I don't know to what extent - it still sits on some amount of IP/patents that cover the doing it right.
What I realized is modern soft-keyboards are actually exceptionally good handling slight miss-clicks. I stopped worrying about hitting the key exactly and just punched it close enough. Auto-correct seems able to figure out that 5% off of a key should be weighed as that key being hit and gets the word right.
With a hard keyboard, I'd just end up with total garbage sometimes.
I need this desperately when the Claude app gets in a psuedo error state.
The aspect ratio/screen size issue is annoying, but I find that a combination of the screen lock setting (for annoying apps that rotate the screen when they go "full screen") combined with scrolling using the capacitive keyboard works just fine without blocking the entire screen.
The one problem I have with the phone, and the reason I'm not dailying it, is that Unihertz is notoriously bad at providing software updates. I'm not too impressed with the Clicks phone either on that front, though at least they're beating Unihertz:
> Communicator will run Android 16. We’re comfortable committing to 2 years of Android updates and 5 years of security updates.
The clicks launcher looks pretty slick, though. I'll definitely try to run that on my Titan 2 when the APK eventually gets dumped.
Source: an iPhone 6s in the family that was a joy for all the right reasons. My current SE 2020 is good, but the lack of force touch really sucks tbh. Do you know, for eg, you could open multitasking with force touch instead of the home button?
Press and hold works for some stuff, but it’s slower. The press and hold to get to the lock screen switcher feels very slow, and inconsistently slow on top of that. Some days it seems to work, while others it seems to take forever.
If you press and hold the emoji button in the lower left, you can pick to have the keyboard shift to the left or right, for easier one handed typing. On the iPad I think you can pull the keyboard apart so you can use one thumb on each side of the screen while holding it (last I used it, you could do this with a gesture of putting your two thumbs in the center of the keyboard and pulling them apart toward the sides).
Press and hold on letters or symbols for accidents or more related symbols. I don’t think this one is that big of a secret, but it’s worth going through all the symbols to see everything that’s available.
I don’t have an iPad currently, but I think it has the numbers on the top row of letters, and you can swipe up (or down, I don’t remember) on the key for quick entry of some numbers without changing to the symbol keyboard.
Double tap the shift key for CAPS LOCK.
In the Settings, there is built in text expansion support (Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement). Adding curse words in here was a way to get around the “ducking” auto-correct in the past, with the typed word and the replacement being set to the same word. If want a way to type more obscure symbols, this is a way to set that up as well, I can type , for example.
They upgraded the speech to text a few years ago. If you got in the habit of not bothering, because you had to be perfect in one take, it’s better now. You can speak, take breaks, and manually correct and add things with your keyboard in the middle of dictation.
That’s all that comes to mind for now.
Android 16 forces developers to use a dynamic screen size, you can't force your app to be landscape only anymore. So maybe this aspect will be less of a problem in the future.
Phones with hardware keyboard like this requires a good keyboard companion app, which Unihertz doesn't have.
The Passport was pretty much perfect, and I've not loved a phone as much before or since.
ISTR Unihertz had to make some significant UX tradeoffs to avoid a Blackberry patent infringement (how else do you explain that shift key). I also found it tiresome to use.
And the screen was high resolution and compact, which many websites didn't like.
I don't know if I'll get this one. Mostly because looking at the above list, I'd have to admit that I have a phone problem...
(I also have another phone problem, which is that I can't seem to type anything accurately on my iPhone keyboard. Solidarity with hardware-keyboard-users.)
I was insanely disappointed when Apple took away the pressure sensitive functionality almost solely because I routinely used it for this purpose, and it never occurred to me that they moved it.
Presentation: The web site shows the same screen - show some variety of what the OS looks like in that format. Also the fact that Telegram is at the top tells me this team is possibly affiliated with Russia.
I second/third/forth all the other comments on this already, it would be better if I didn't have to buy into the google android system; seems like google has lost most of the trust with most people.
Voice control makes for a fun scifi gimmick but it is incredibly impractical in real life without an alternative interface, in my experience.
By "open" above, I don't necessarily mean open hardware (though that would be great). I just mean "as open as a random consumer x86 computer you can just throw any Linux distro at without any special secret sauce".
Your options are things like the CHIP (which is dead, now, I think?), Pocket GPD or other gaming focused ultra-portable, or something like the Pinephone.
The small+portable nature of these phones make them unsuitable for amd64 chips (so far) so everyone is using ARM chips, which means dealing with weird and quirky bootloaders or hard-coded OS keys. Qualcomm is putting effort into getting some iterations of their hardware into a well-supported state, so hopefully we may see better mainline Linux support on their chips soon. However, you're not going to get your hands on Qualcomm chips if you don't beat their (high) minimum order quantities and these tiny keyboard phones are hardly mainstream devices, so they often end up with MediaTek chips which have absolutely terrible mainline Linux support (and even worse bootloader quirks).
Also, who cares if it's beautiful.
I read the homepage, but I couldn't figure out how this phone was anti-doomscrolling. It still has a touchscreen, right? And it even has a blinky light up button on the side, something iPhone doesn't. What am I missing?
I've never gotten used to the touch keyboard, since writing anything while code-switching multiple languages doesn't really work well with the predictive input. Especially if the other language has to be transliterated from a non Latin script.
Though the update policy doesn't sound too promising, 2 years of OS updates + 5 years of security updates is too short :/
[1] https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_xperia_x10_mini_pro-3...
EDIT: was referring to their first product that is an iphone case plus keyboard (I just noticed they have a new keyboard offering).
I know the marketing pitch is "carry this alongside your iPhone" but honestly, for a certain subset of us, this is just the daily driver we've been waiting for since the BlackBerry Key2 died. If the bootloader is unlockable and I can get LineageOS on this eventually, I am in.
>Communicator will run Android 16. We’re comfortable committing to 2 years of Android updates and 5 years of security updates
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