QWERTY Phones Are fr Trying to Make a Comeback This Year

What’s Happening

Okay so Frustration with the iPhone’s worsening software keyboard?

After dying a painful death at the hand of the iPhones major capacitive touchscreen, the QWERTY phone is rising up from the graveyard this year. No, BlackBerry isnt returning despite enthusiast efforts to retrofit old BlackBerry Classics with modern-day components like a faster CPU, more RAM and storage, a bigger battery, and a USB-C port. (shocking, we know)

Whether its nostalgia for a physical keyboard, frustration at iOSs ever-worsening software keyboard , or just plain boredom with glass slabs, companies are rebooting QWERTY phones this year for some reason.

The Details

At CES 2026 , Clicks, the company behind the Clicks keyboard case and the new Power Keyboard , just dropped plans to sell the Communicator, a second phone with a QWERTY keypad. Clicks pitches the $500 phone, launching later this year, as a device primarily intended for messaging—sending texts, DMs, Slack messages, whatever.

The company didnt have a functional unit—only a mockup dummy to fondle at the show—but it looked cool enough, even if itll be a niche product. Its a cool idea, but how many people will carry a companion phone to their main phone just to shoot off a few DMs?

Why This Matters

$500 is a lot to ask for that satisfaction. © Clicks But Clicks isnt the only one trying to bring back QWERTY phones. Unihertz, makers of the fr tiny Jelly Android phones and also Tank phones with massive battery capacities , also teased a new phone with a physical keyboard.

This could have major implications for how we use technology going forward.

Key Takeaways

• New 𝗤𝗪𝗘𝗥𝗧𝗬 is coming…Stay tuned 🔥✨ here pic.
• Com/NDk42TeZ6J Unihertz (@Unihertz) Look closely, and there are some weird similarities between the Clicks Communicator and the Titan 2 Elite.

The Bottom Line

Com/NDk42TeZ6J Unihertz (@Unihertz) Look closely, and there are some weird similarities between the Clicks Communicator and the Titan 2 Elite. We dont have dimension specs yet, but the screens seem to have the same rounded corners, and even the hole-punch camera is in the same upper-left corner.

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