Bear in mind BlackBerry telephones? These iconic biscuit-shaped smartphones of the early 2010s with onerous plastic buttons positioned beneath easy, low-res touchscreens have impressed the look of a brand new product from Clicks Know-how.
Slightly than releasing a brand new smartphone to compete with the likes of the Apple iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy lineup, the Clicks Communicator is designed to be a tool that works alongside the smartphone you already personal. It will be on show at CES 2026 subsequent week.
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With the tagline, “doing, not doomscrolling,” Clicks envisions the Communicator as a type of back-to-basics good machine targeted on communication and work. It says the machine primarily pares down the entire distractions that include right this moment’s large-screen, social media-centric smartphones. Many individuals have already began carrying a second telephone for privateness or to set boundaries, the corporate mentioned.
The retro-styled Communicator, priced at $499, hyperlinks as much as your principal telephone so you may get emails and texts on it. To be clear, you continue to want a separate smartphone for this machine to work.
A Clicks Communicator hanging out with an iPhone 17 Professional.
Jeff Gadway, the corporate’s chief advertising and marketing officer, describes the Communicator’s relationship to your smartphone to what a Kindle is to an iPad. “It is a complementary product that stands by itself, optimized for a selected function,” Gadway mentioned within the Friday announcement.
The keyboard is “touch-sensitive,” so customers can scroll by messages with out utilizing the display, and the machine helps voice recordings. Different options embrace a 3.5mm headphone jack, a swap for airplane mode, expandable micoSD storage, and a bodily SIM tray in addition to eSIM compatibility. It has a 50-megapixel principal digicam and a 24-megapixel entrance digicam.
The Communicator, which has Android 16 put in, is 131.5mm tall and weighs 170 grams.
At launch, the Communicator is available in three muted colours, together with onyx. You too can swap out the again of the machine for various colours. You possibly can pay a reservation deposit of $199 beginning right this moment. Or in case you simply need to purchase one earlier than it comes out at an unspecified date “later this 12 months,” the corporate is providing a $299 early fowl worth, which is $100 off the launch worth.
The magnetic attachment of the Energy Keyboard permits a telephone to be connected in vertical or panorama orientation.
Clicks’ Energy Keyboard
Along with the Communicator, Clicks additionally on Friday introduced a keyboard for smartphones that attaches to your common telephone by way of MagSafe or Qi2 magnetic connection and appears like the underside half of a BlackBerry, with those self same old-school buttons, as an alternative of haptics simulating contact.
The Power Keyboard has a slider that enables it to be connected to smartphones of various sizes, and you should use the keyboard with a smartphone positioned both vertically or horizontally above it. The Energy Keyboard can also be obtainable for preorder right this moment at $79. Availability is predicted “within the spring,” the corporate mentioned.
It may also be paired with a pill or good TV in addition to AR and VR environments, the corporate mentioned.
“Energy Keyboard brings a constant, assured typing expertise to all of your good gadgets, in a compact keyboard you may take wherever in your pocket,” Kevin Michaluk, president of Clicks, mentioned in an announcement.
