Clicks created a new BlackBerry to work alongside your smartphone – but this is no retro revival

Clicks has revealed its first phone – the company that brought you the Clicks keyboard, adding a physical keyboard to your iPhone, has now made an actual handset. Called the Communicator, this phone is designed to “help people communicate clearly, act quickly, and stay focused in a noisy digital world.”

The device looks a lot like a modern interpretation of a BlackBerry, with a compact design, a colour screen and a manual keyboard. It features a simplified operating system that collates your messages from all your messaging apps (Gmail, Telegram, WhatsApp, and Slack) and serves up the important ones directly to the home screen.

The idea is for people to be able to respond quickly to important communications, without having to search through multiple apps. To help you prioritise, the phone also features what it calls a signal light, which can display different colours and light patterns. These can then be assigned to different people, groups or apps – like a visual version of a customised ringtone.

Rather than looking to replace people’s smartphones, however, the idea is that the Clicks Communicator would be a perfect second phone. It can be used at times when you’d rather not be distracted by social media feeds.

That’s not to say this phone is basic, though, aside from the 4.03-inch screen, this is very much a modern handset. It features global 5G and 4G LTE band support, as well as 3G and 2G, has 256GB storage (expandable via microSD), NFC with Google Pay for tap payment, Bluetooth 5.4 and WiFi 6.

Unlike the BlackBerrys of old, it even has a decent camera setup. There’s a 50MP image-stabilised camera on the rear and a 24MP selfie camera on the front. Though without social apps, you’ll be sending those snaps by WhatsApp or Telegram.

The key feature, though, is the manual keyboard. Like the buttons on the Clicks Keyboard for iPhone, the Clicks Communicator features a QWERTY keyboard, with larger keys to enable “quick and confident typing.” There’s also speech-to-text and voice recording options built in, for the times you can’t type.

Other manual features on the Clicks Communicator include a 3.5mm headphone jack, a “kill switch” for aeroplane mode or custom operation and a physical SIM tray (though eSIM is also available).

Like the Clicks Keyboard, the Communicator is very clearly aimed at a Gen X demographic, who grew up on BlackBerrys and Nokias. But given the success of those cases, they could be on to something here.

Having this as a second phone would of course, require you to get a second SIM card or line, unless you plan to keep swapping SIMs or eSIMs between devices. I also wonder if having all of your messages in one place might be more overwhelming than in their own separate silos. Either way, I can’t wait to give this phone a try, and maybe it will wean me off TikTok for a few hours.

Early bird pricing for the Clicks Communicator starts from $399 (£296), with the option to pay just a $199 (£148) reservation on the Clicks website. There's currently no UK or European prices listed for this product.

Clicks Power Keyboard

Clicks also revealed a new Power Keyboard. This is a magnetic power bank with a sliding manual keyboard attached, bringing the features of the previous Clicks Keyboard for iPhone to a wider range of handsets. It comes in either an iPhone / iPhone Pro or an iPhone Pro Max size and has a 2150mAh capacity battery.

Prices for the Clicks Power Keyboard currently start from £60 / $79 with a preorder on the Clicks website.