This New Android phone Is For Everyone Who Misses the Bla...

What’s Happening

Okay so A Blackberry style companion device for all your messaging needs.

Clicks, the company behind those physical keyboard cases for your phone , has just dropped a new device, but it’ll look pretty familiar to anyone who’s used a Blackberry before. It’s called the Clicks Communicator , and it’s a pocketable little handset that’s immaculate for anyone who misses having physical buttons on their phone. (yes, really)

It comes with a full, old-school style QWERTY keyboard and runs Android 16, and while you can pump it full of apps and use it standalone, Clicks says it expects many of its users will prefer to use it as a minimalistic companion to a primary phone.

The Details

In that way, this device is designed to be your secondary phone, where you only load it with the apps you need at a moments notice and use it to quickly reply to your messages, emails, and other important notifications. The Clicks Communicator is a modern Blackberry Credit: Clicks One of the headlining features of the Clicks Communicator is the Signal LED, which is a notification light around the side button.

You can set it to light up with a different color based on who’s pinged you or which apps are sending you notifications, so you can know what needs your attention first without having to scroll through a long series of notification boxes. For instance, you could set up a green LED for notifications from people you care about, and use other colors for different apps.

Why This Matters

I’m not entirely sure how this’ll play out in practice, because I do worry that I’ll forget which color is for what after a point. Fortunately, Clicks says you can also turn off the Signal LED if it’s not useful for you (and yes, there will still be traditional notification boxes if you need them). As for the core experience, in line with its design philosophy, the company has chosen not to show you an app grid when you go to the home screen.

This is part of the broader shift happening across the tech industry right now.

The Bottom Line

As for the core experience, in line with its design philosophy, the company has chosen not to show you an app grid when you go to the home screen. In collaboration with Niagara Launcher, Click has instead built a messaging hub, which shows you all your pending alerts on the home screen, grouped by app.

What do you think about all this?