It's one thing to have a great idea and another to actually make it a reality. The newly announced Clicks Communicator phone, from the keyboard phone case company of the same name, is a breath of fresh air that is also oh-so-familiar. You might easily mistake it for a BlackBerry phone from circa 2007, and that's because it was designed by a former BlackBerry designer. However, it runs Android 16 and has a nifty, minimalist app launcher that looks sleek and contemporary. In the hour I spent learning about it and using a nonworking prototype, the Clicks Communicator quickly became my favorite CES gadget in years.
The Communicator is a surprisingly smart take that combines old and new phone features in a way that, aside from Motorola, very few phone-makers have successfully done before. It's a straightforward-to-use Android smartphone with seemingly every popular feature that companies have removed over the past decade.
In its compact design, there is a physical keyboard, a notification alert light, a headphone jack, a physical SIM card tray, support for a microSD card, and numerous buttons. Jony Ive's soul must be hurting right now.
At a time when phones have become overly complicated, AI-centric attention stealers, the Clicks Communicator aims to provide an experience optimized for typing and voice-to-text recording, all while minimizing distractions. It's designed to be a secondary device that complements your regular smartphone. The idea is similar to what Palm tried almost a decade ago, when it sold a small Android phone meant to complement larger ones. However, Palm's phone didn't offer amenities like a physical keyboard.
"Communicator is to a smartphone what a Kindle is to an iPad," said Jeff Gadway, chief marketing officer at Clicks, in a press release. "It's a complementary product that stands on its own, optimized for a specific purpose. In the case of Clicks Communicator, that means communicating with confidence in a noisy world."
We expect our smartphones to do anything we want, but that often means compromising on how features are implemented. On an iPhone 17 Pro, for example, I can definitely type and respond to texts, emails and jot down the occasional random thought in the Notes app. But for me, and I expect many others, I have a much more enjoyable experience typing on a physical keyboard. I prefer to use a laptop to respond to a long or complex email versus writing it on a phone.
But the Communicator's singular focus on input, along with the fact that it can be your only phone, unlocks a much wider appeal (at least on paper). I could see the Communicator being the ideal "work" phone for those jobs where you want a separate device from your personal smartphone. You could quickly respond to a Slack thread without being tempted to check out TikTok or Instagram.
It might be an attractive option to a growing number of people who crave a phone that doesn't need all their attention every damn minute. This could be someone burnt out from being obsessively online or someone who misses having a physical keyboard and features like a headphone jack. It could appeal to a person who wants a minimal-feeling smartphone like the Light Phone and Punkt, which each have their own take on what a less distracting phone might look like.
The Communicator costs $499 and launches later this year. However, you can preorder the phone for $399 or reserve one for $199 right now. It joins the Clicks Keyboard Pro and Keyboard Case.
"We're really trying to help have people see us as a company that's building purpose-built tech for people who want to do shit and not doom scroll," Gadway told me.
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