This Barebones Smartphone Is A Modern Take On The Classic BlackBerry

When the iPhone launched in 2007, other tech companies laughed in disbelief. Steve Ballmer, then the CEO of Microsoft, scoffed at Apple's latest gadget, claiming its lack of a physical keyboard would make it a hard sell for business customers. Nearly two decades on, though, the iPhone is undefeated. It spawned a cultural revolution in personal computing, rendering every keyboard-carrying competitor irrelevant in the process.

But one company is now asking, what if Ballmer had a point? In relinquishing our full-sized BlackBerry and Palm keyboards for touchscreen typing, have we accepted a downgraded typing experience in the name of progress and bigger screens? That's where Clicks, the company best known for making iPhone and Android cases with full-sized, physical keyboards built in, comes into the picture. Clicks cases make modern smartphones look comically elongated, but for a certain type of customer  — those of us old enough to remember salivating over the latest RIM handsets  — the addition of real buttons is worth the cumbersome cost.

With a BlackBerry revival nowhere in sight, though, Clicks has taken the next step and revealed its own smartphone at the start of 2026. The Clicks Communicator, as it's called, aims to reproduce the best aspects of a BlackBerry with a few modern ideas thrown into the mix. It could be the perfect phone for anyone who wants to kick their doomscrolling habit and turn their smartphone into a productivity hub. Or, it could be a passing curiosity that winds up languishing in a desk drawer. Either way, it's one of the most unique Android phones we've seen in quite some time.

As its name implies, the Clicks Communicator is a pocketable Android device built around messaging and email. With a squared-off, 4.03-inch AMOLED display taking up the top half of the palm-sized handset and a full QWERTY keyboard below it, the device is poorly suited to scrolling on TikTok or Instagram  — and that's the point. Clicks partnered with Niagara Launcher, a popular third-party home screen replacement app for Android, to create the Communicator's interface. Rather than rows of pinned apps, its home screen is a list of incoming messages from Google Messages, WhatsApp, Slack, email clients, and so on.

Although it can be used as a standalone device, Clicks is positioning the Communicator as a secondary device for use alongside a typical smartphone. Even so, those pushing back against social media  — or who prefer smaller phones  — may find the Communicator tempting as a primary device. 

Running Android 16 out of the box, the Communicator will support all the same apps as a Samsung or Google phone. However, Clicks has neglected to mention which processor will power the device, revealing only that it will be a modern, 4nm SOC from MediaTek. That wording indicates a mid-range chip, which would make sense given the Communicator's $500 launch price (although those who reserve one early will pay $399 instead).

Although we won't know how good the Clicks Communicator will feel to use without hands-on testing, it at least enters the market with some fresh ideas packed into a form factor that's reminiscent of some of the most iconic BlackBerry phones of all time. What's not new, however, is the 3.5mm headphone jack or the expandable MicroSD storage. Nor is it a novel idea to make the entire keyboard a touch-sensitive, swipeable trackpad with a fingerprint reader in the spacebar.

RIM beat Clicks to the former of those features with the BlackBerry Passport in 2014, and the latter was first found on the BlackBerry KeyOne in 2017. Still, physical mobile keyboard enthusiasts will be pleased to see those features make their way to the Communicator. Likewise, the "kill switch" that silences the phone has precedent on smartphones from OnePlus and Apple.

Unique to the Communicator is what Clicks calls the Signal LED. The side of the phone sports a prominent button with a glowing RGB LED. This LED, reminiscent of the LED notification lights present on Android devices in the 2010s, can be customized to show different colors based on alerts from specific messaging platforms or contacts — you could use green for WhatsApp or blue for Slack, for example, but also pink for your significant other or red for your boss. These messaging-focused functions are emblematic of the Communicator's purpose-built design. Like the custom Android skin, they're a deliberate choice to make the phone good at messaging, even if it makes the device less suited to other purposes.