Time to reserve a Clicks Communicator?

Finally. Someone is doing something about the ultra boring homogenous mobile world out there.

The team behind the highly popular Clicks keyboard have decided to go one better. Not content with enabling the awesome BlackBerry Bold typing experience on your iPhone (my description!), they have decided to launch a completely new device. This is on the back of co-founder Kevin's campaign to Bring Back BlackBerry.

The Clicks Communicator looks brilliant.

It's an Android phone, but focused heavily on the communications experience that we used to expect from the likes of BlackBerry. Yes it runs Android 16, but the entire design is built around messaging. Not least with the integrated 'BlackBerryish' (my description) keyboard and the rather smart flashing indicator button on the right.

Yes, remember the BlackBerry's flashing-red-light on the top right to tell you there was a new message? Well, the Communicator has this:

You got it. The Signal LED there flashes according to specific communications updates that the device has received.

I think the Blue 'boss' one is particularly helpful.

I would also suggest that the prominent featuring of Telegram across the device screenshots is very good news for that platform. I use it a lot for my own bot notifications so it would be very relevant for me.

The Clicks Communicator Philosophy of being able to triage messaging updates is shown on the front-screen screenshots:

We've yet to see a really good implementation on a device – I think the Clicks approach could work very nicely. At the moment, I'm having to do this manually with my iPhone alerts.

There's a nano-SIM included, but really, I think we can all hopefully begin to get away from the need from this approach soon as the device also supports eSIM. That's my preference ongoing now. (I don't want to have to mess about with tiny bits of metal to make my devices work nowadays – although I have to say a lot of mobile operators still rely heavily on physical sims to get you in the door of their physical shops.)

What else? Well there's an obligatory 50 megapixel back camera, it runs 5G and it offers 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax WiFi. It comes with 256GB storage with the ability to add up to 2TB too. The joy of Android.

The last section of the Clicks Communicator main page asks a key question: "Primary Phone or Companion?"

I think for many, initially, this will be a companion device. That's not a problem, at all, I don't think.

However, I can readily imagine it first being a primary companion device with the iPhone (in my case) as my secondary, simply because it's got all the standard stuff on it that I use.

But over time, I could imagine it swiftly becoming my default device, especially because it's not like ye olde BlackBerry – where only half a dozen apps worked on it. I remember carrying my BlackBerry Bold as my default device - but I still needed the iPhone in order to access all of the other stuff like banking apps, parking apps ... because nobody had bothered making them for the BlackBerry OS.

That isn't the case with the Communicator. Almost everything any iPhone user might need is available on Android.

The Clicks Communicator is a compelling approach. I love the sound of it. Given the engineering pedigree of the Clicks team (they've already got a lot of experience now, bringing a serious device to market, with all the resulting challenges that this involves) I think the device stands a great chance of being everything the website promises.

If I was a mobile device giant, I would be watching this incredibly carefully. There are a class of individuals who just need to get stuff done and for whom messaging is absolutely paramount. Just think about every BlackBerry user in years gone by. I think it's reasonably fair to say that the basic messaging experience on iPhone/Android has only got worse since then.

I could imagine these things flying off the shelves if they catch the zeitgeist – and I think the Clicks Communicator is well positioned for this. If I was an operator or device manufacturer, I'd be wanting pre-release access to see what they're building and I'd be strongly evaluating being the first to take a stake, give the team some operating cash and file this under innovation in the Annual Report.

You can reserve your very own Clicks Communicator right now for a special price of $399 (£297 GBP) right now, or you can put down a deposit for $199 (£148 GBP) now to lock in that price when the device is available.

Good luck Team Clicks!