Clicks Communicator

I had the Unihertz Titan for a while . It was a fun experiment, but I ultimately found it too annoying for continued daily use

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.

Can wait to get my Clicks jeans with 18 pockets for all my devices. Or my Clicks sport coat which includes a hood.

Also find it ironic how all these things are starting to look more and more like my old Palm Pilot.

Seems like they have a good idea for a phone and want to fund the development using "pre-orders" (aka a Kickstarter). I went through the website, all the marketing and the launch video to find out how this thing works, but all I see is the same rendered home screen and lots of promises. Even in the video they show plenty of models of the phone lying around but never one turned on and working.

I really do hope they succeed, and will definitely buy one if it turns out to be a viable product, but not before that.

This might actually get me to switch away from apple. Although I've gotten to the point where I realize that phones are mostly gimmicky sales portals, and it's just easier to do stuff on a real computer.

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.

This is looking great, hope the camera can at least produce decent photos. So many other phones with a QEWRTY keyboard just have awful cameras.

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.

Actually, this was initially a phone accessory (1) with a keyboard.

App reviews (2) saying that there was lot of glitches with keyboard app.

I assume same approach will be for the this phone: accessory keyboard over android phone.

1. https://www.clicks.tech/en

2. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.clicks.com...

This actually looks nice! I'd prefer a slide out horizontal keyboard like the X10 Mini Pro[1], but beggars can't be choosers.

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...

>Designed for doing, not doomscrolling.

It still has a touchscreen, right? And it even has a blinky light up button on the side, something iPhone doesn't. I read the homepage, but I couldn't figure out how this phone was "anti-doomscrolling" - what am I missing?

Beautiful hardware. If they'd commit to GrapheneOS's hardware requirements https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices, I'd preorder... I'm stuck on Pixels because Graphene is so nice.

Wow I wish they had announced this sooner. I just ordered a keyphone but this looks way more suited to my use case. I just want a basic feature phone + qwerty keyboard + signal + whats app.

I've been using a lightphone for 3 years but i can't stand the touch screen and only having SMS is annoying.

I bought their Clicks phone case for iPhone and was very disappointed. The keyboard was dismal to type on and slowed me down significantly.

If they're using the same keyboard in this phone, it won't be of interest to me.

I'm surprised this is a thing. with the advances in STT I want the other extreme - a smaller and smaller device that leverages better voice control - super efficient inferencing chip on board and low power mic that's worn on your person to make said STT very very accurate (>95% word accuracy).

Ah man this hardware looks amazing — I just don’t know if I could give up living on iOS…

Looks great and the price is a pleasant surprise. Can we flash a custom OS to it?

I'm missing having LED colours for notifications on my current phone.

> What languages will be supported?

> As a real keyboard with the QWERTY layout, Communicator supports languages that use the Latin alphabet: [...] Russian

Weird

I feel like I see an independent low-noise phone project like, every 3 months. Clearly there is some latent demand here. I wonder why the big players (Google, Apple, Samsung, HTC) haven't made a big-corp product for this market.

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?

For people who miss blackberry.

It would be nice to have something like this with a privacy OS

The user interface looks very similar to Niagara Launcher. I found it a really fresh and comfortable alternative to the default android launchers

The first rendering made me think it was as thick as a brick, and that got me kind of excited for a moment…

Any device that isn’t as thick and heavy as the original Game Boy feels uncomfortably cramped in my hands.

Being unable to fit in a pocket would be a plus. I want a device I have to consciously choose to carry with me to a new room, like a tablet or a pound of butter.

It looks more like hype than a real product.

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.

I wouldn’t buy this with Android - especially not out their software expiration policies. It’s designed to be obsolete. Put another OS on it and it would be great.

Presentation: The web site shows the same screen - show some variety of what the OS looks like in that format.

Cool, I have a friend who always mourned the loss of his physical keyboard, I will tell him. I wish it could run standard Linux though (perhaps it can) - would make it a sweet little cyberdeck…

I was disappointed by their iPhone keyboard offering. I felt like their product was superficially good: fancy adds, fancy web-page, the keyboard looked nice, BUT the functionality was not well thought out. They seemed to not realize that they need to provide a hell of a lot of benefit to warrant making an iPhone - especially a max - bigger and heavier. So, sure, they provided physical qwerty. But, they did not make it easy to bind keys or combos to all/most of the Apple supported shortcuts that a bluetooth keyboard would be able to take advantage of. The result is that even if I liked the qwerty, I still have to take my fingers off of it to touch the damn screen to do basic navigation. With better leadership, they would be a much stronger company.

EDIT: was referring to their first product that is an iphone case plus keyboard (I just noticed they have a new keyboard offering).

Slight digression: why isn't a computer – a general purpose computer, open enough to run mainline Linux – in this form factor readily available? I'm fine with not calling it a phone. I just don't understand why we don't have (connected) open pocket computers by now, with all the innovations introduced by smartphones more or less commoditized by now.

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".

Pretty neat. I have the Clicks keyboard and I just wish the keys weren't so stiff. Too hard to type on, sadly.

Sounds like a competitor to the Minimal Phone?

I've been rocking a Razr 2025 Ultra and just try to do everything on the front screen. Its not the best experience, just pre-ordered this, excited to try it!

I've been very impressed by the attention to detail Clicks puts into their products. It might be a niche but it seems like one that deserves to exist.

Isnt this just a blackberry?

Have used a Clicks keyboard on my Pro Max to great effect. Being able to touch type without looking, even whilst walking around/changing trains has been truly game changing. Writing SOPs, editing spreadsheets, answering long mails, typing without the atrocious autocorrect making it impossible, all that is far better with the Clicks keyboard. I feel that this is their differentiator and a key customer market they should lean into, people who need reliable input and are willing to sacrifice other things for it.

Personally wish their marketing leaned into the productivity more than in this "second-device" trend. Never understood that if I am totally honest. The logic for buying a $ 700,- Light Phone over just installing a launcher and muting the colours is allegedly that it creates more friction, but there is just as much keeping you from just using your existing phone once you purchased a Light Phone as there is preventing you from uninstalling the launcher. Basically, I see this category as rather dishonest, at most holding on by a treat with the sunk cost argument that anyone truly addicted is unlikely to even feel, so I'd rather see them lean into what makes them great rather than chase an artificial category, often more focused on signaling the intent to lessen phone user over actually facilitating it.

State clearly, proudly and with full conviction that yes, this is a main device and yes, there are things this will do better than arguably anything else on the market, mainly because Clicks does keyboards a multitude better than any alternative, be it Unihertz or Minimal.

I may eventually get one of these just to use with Claude code. Been looking for the lightest best machine to use with agents.

I have fond memories of my LG enV2, so much that I tried a hardware keyboard again a few years ago. Hardware solves the tactile problem but the most painful part of mobile typing is cursor navigation, basic editing, and tiny text areas. So, now I can feel the keys, but it does nothing to enhance navigation, or basic editing; I get a smaller screen for text areas (and all other non-typing related tasks); and if any of those tiny keys breaks, the entire device is useless.

>What version of Android will be supported?

>Communicator will run Android 16. We’re comfortable committing to 2 years of Android updates and 5 years of security updates

This feels very scammy.

One of these running linux would be nice, but definitely not buying one to run Android.

I love it. Finally some innovation. Now make it incapable of instagram and TikTok and other invasive social media crap and we might have the winner for the next decade. As if :(