Bear in mind BlackBerry telephones? These iconic biscuit-shaped smartphones of the early 2010s with laborious plastic buttons positioned beneath easy, low-res touchscreens have impressed the look of a brand new product from Clicks Know-how.
Fairly 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 system centered on communication and work. It says the system primarily pares down all the distractions that include as we speak’s large-screen, social media-centric smartphones. Many individuals have already began carrying a second telephone for privateness or to set boundaries, the corporate stated.
The retro-styled Communicator, priced at $499, hyperlinks as much as your fundamental telephone so you may get emails and texts on it. To be clear, you continue to want a separate smartphone for this system 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 particular objective,” Gadway stated within the Friday announcement.
The keyboard is “touch-sensitive,” so customers can scroll by way of messages with out utilizing the display screen, and the system helps voice recordings. Different options embody 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 fundamental 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 can even swap out the again of the system for various colours. You may pay a reservation deposit of $199 beginning as we speak. Or for those who simply wish to purchase one earlier than it comes out at an unspecified date “later this yr,” 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 hooked up 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 hooked up to smartphones of various sizes, and you should utilize the keyboard with a smartphone positioned both vertically or horizontally above it. The Energy Keyboard can also be accessible for preorder as we speak at $79. Availability is predicted “within the spring,” the corporate stated.
It will also be paired with a pill or good TV in addition to AR and VR environments, the corporate stated.
“Energy Keyboard brings a constant, assured typing expertise to all of your good units, in a compact keyboard you’ll be able to take anyplace in your pocket,” Kevin Michaluk, president of Clicks, stated in an announcement.

