They’ve said the bootloader will be unlockable, but ROM support we’ll have to see. It depends on the community.

GrapheneOS has insanely specific requirements that keep them only on Pixels unfortunately.

Well compared to everything else coming out it’s small…

It’s basically as tall as the discontinued iPhone Mini, while being about as wide as the larger models.

The Spacebar has a built-in fingerprint sensor, which could be handy for unlocking the phone quickly. The keypad is touch-sensitive, which means that you can slide your fingers over it to scroll through messages. And before you ask, yes, it also has a 4.03-inch OLED touchscreen display for those of us who like scrolling on a smoother surface.

Some of you may also be pleased to know that the Clicks Communicator has a 3.5mm headphone jack and that it supports microSD cards for storage expansion. It ships with 256GB storage and you can add a microSD card with up to 2TB of capacity.

The device runs Android 16, supports Qi2 wireless charging, has a USB-C port, and has a 50-MP rear camera with optical image stabilization, alongside a 24-MP front camera. It’s powered by a 4nm MediaTek chip that has 5G support. It’s a dual-SIM phone with one physical SIM slot and an eSIM

It also has NFC for mobile payment support. I’m not seeing many compromises here except perhaps the camera and processor. I’m gonna use this as my next phone.

The Clicks marketing team has been marketing this as a “second device”. I think that’s a miss-step. Very few people want to have two phones. They exist, but it seems like this device should be a completely capable phone on it’s own. It’ll be a niche device either way but I think the “people who want a small phone with physical buttons” niche is larger than the “people who want two phones of of which is small with physical buttons” crowd. And it causes confusion. Some people saw the announcement and didn’t realize it’s a full fledged independent phone…

Firstly you most likely just cannot. Device support is very narrow.

But I have a phone I got secondhand just to play with it. I want to love it, but it feels dated. The gestures make using a lot of stuff hard. But the biggest thing is that in my country I can’t even make calls due to no VoLTE support. Kinda kills even using it daily even as an experiment.

I did submit a pull request to add Colemak keyboard layout support to the keyboard though, which was accepted. So technically I’m a contributor :)

Cloudflare. They sell and renew at cost ($12 iirc)

I hear Porkbun does/did as well but I haven’t looked in a long time.

It is, they’re partnering with them to make a customized version for the phone.

True, though they do have help from some people who worked at/designed the old BlackBerry and have shipped several well received pieces of hardware before.

No, but while I’d love a Linux phone it’s just not viable for me yet. They can’t make phone calls in my country without VoLTE support.

I will never buy a product that isn’t already produced and ready to ship. Funding campaigns like this are imo most likely scams, very often not serious and if they truly are great, I’d rather wait for V2 or V3 to come, before buying

To be fair this company already ships hardware in physical retail stores (keyboard cases for existing phones). I’m fairly certain they’re serious here but yeah waiting for the real deal is always a better bet.

the physical keyboard is great for english users but terrible for people who need to use 2 or 3 languages on their phones.

That’s true, or depends on which languages. Some use QWERTY layouts already like Spanish. I’m bilingual in Spanish and don’t forsee any issue with typing in Spanish on this. They have said that holding down a key works like you’d expect, bringing up diacritics/alternate symbols. The typing suggestions can be bilingual no issue. They said they do want to ship more keyboard variants (QWERTZ/etc) but can’t commit to more SKUs at this stage.

I need android or iPhone to run the local authentication apps for banking, doctors appointments app and even some times payment methods

Non-issue. This is an Android phone, that will supposedly have the latest version and full Play Store access.

This keyboard is touch sensitive actually, meaning you can swipe to move the cursor. Actually I’m wondering if it couldn’t support swipe texting.

Anyway I have no nostalgia for the keyboard, never used a phone with one.

Oh yeah for sure. I’m just saying Mediatek doesn’t automatically mean bad like it used to.

That’s really aggressive… I said they’re NOT pushing AI with this which is great.

Do you have a recommendation for a full featured Linux device usable as a phone? I’d love that but most seem more expensive and in my country basically none of them can even make a phone call due to not supporting VoLTE so it’s not yet a realistic option.

Warning: reddit link

https://www.reddit.com/r/ClicksKeyboard/comments/1qjldo5/comment/o12ylej/

Whether or not we’ll actually see full ROMs or Linux distros isn’t going to really be knowable until developers have one in hand.

They’ve gotten way better with the Dimensity line last I heard, to the point that the high end ones were topping Qualcomms high end offerings

I have no nostalgia for blackberry as I never had one. My first mobile phone was a touchscreen. It just appeals to me as it has a lot of style and personality, at a decent price. It’s also plastic in a world of glass covered phones, with a headphone jack and expandable storage. And I don’t watch a lot of videos (on my phone) and think this screen would work just fine for 99% of what I do. But it still CAN watch video or anything any smartphone can do.

The marketing stuff is whatever.

Yeah that’s the big question. I mean they also make keyboard cases which work well technically and are well made but having to redesign it for every new model phone seems unrealistic and also it makes your phone comically long and unbalanced.

Did you see their other product? The Qi2/Magsafe keyboard? https://www.clicks.tech/powerkeyboard

It looks like basically the best you can get with that concept and typical phones realistically.

I do not want a dumb phone. I don’t buy the concept of dumb phones. I want to use this like a normal phone and do all the normal phone stuff like I said in the post…

Actually the keyboard is touch sensitive. I’m wondering if they couldn’t make it so that you could swipe to type even on this…

Yeah. Praying for the camera to be good enough.