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According to the support ticket I put in last week when I saw the first post about this, the bootloader will be unlockable. Or, at least that's what they said. So here's hoping we see nice debloated/de-googled ROMs.
At the very least, it should be immediately rootable with Magisk.
It has a MediaTek chip, so I wouldn't be so optimistic about custom ROMs, but as you said, at least you could root it and de-Google
Android 16, $399, 170g, blackberry-like keyboard, "companion" to a bigger phone or can be used as a main phone, 4000 mah presumably non-removable. It does have a wired headphone port, props for that. Main purpose seems to be to declutter the comms apps such as messaging, plus make typing easier with the blackberry keyboard. Meh. I have a full sized but skinny Bluetooth keyboard that weighs a lot less and was like $10.
I think the main purpose is probably to provide a more-usable "dumbphone" experience. I know a lot of people (myself included) who would love to doomscroll less, but need a more full-fat version of Android for work or family. Using Digital Wellbeing and the like gets part of the way there, but not the whole way. With this, the weird aspect ratio means that pretty much all video is going to be letterboxed to a crazy extent, which could be enough to make bypassing those controls feel pointless. And then they used that extra space for a physical keyboard, which is genius. If this thing had a better camera, I'd be all in.
It sounds to me that the dumbphone experience could be supplied on a regular android phone, with an app or launcher that uses kiosk mode.
I don't really want that much control removed, though. I just want to have a little bit more friction between my serotonin-starved brain and the cortisol river on Facebook.
uninstall the Facebook app. you can still access it through your mobile web browser, but without the app you have more steps between you and it that givez your conscious brain more time to stop.
Screen ratio is perfect for emulators, tho - and the keyboard can be customized for their use with KeyMapper. Agree on camera, and replaceable battery other commenter mentioned, tho.
hmm. That's true. And dangerous, lol.
How pocketable is that keyboard, tho? Not that I'm all that into a physical keyboard since swype-style entry is my thing, but I can use them as buttons that can be programmed for various tasks and/or used with emulators. Never mind unlockable bootloaders are becoming far too rare these days.
The BT keyboard I use weighs a few ounces. It is not pocketable but I don't notice it in my backpack. I had one way back that was pocketable and would have been way more usable than a blackberry keyboard, but the keys bounced something terrible, probably due to crap debouncing software inside. I thought of getting another one that might be better, but am happy with the full sized one. I don't write that much text on a phone anyway. I use my laptop when I can.
This feels so contradictory! You don't write that much text on a phone - but enough to buy a full-size keyboard for it, that you carry around in your backpack? I don't think many people like going to that much trouble. An extra thing whose battery status needs to be monitored, an extra thing to turn the Bluetooth for - and where do you place it for typing? Where do you put the phone so you can see the screen? Needs a table.
The keyboard just sits in my backpack, so I have it if I want to type more than a few sentences on my phone, which usually means I didn't bring my laptop (an old chonker). A smaller laptop would be better tbh, but my old one broke and I haven't replaced it. Yeah seeing the phone screen while typing isn't so easy, but I'm a touch typist, so I type first and then look. Battery not too much of a problem tbh. I just charge it up once in a while. I had one previously that used AAA cells (preferable) but I misplaced it.
It's not perfect but it beats the phone keyboard and I would say beats a Blackberry-style keyboard. I never used a real Blackberry but I had a Nokia E63 for a while, and it was the same idea. It was better than a screen keyboard but still a severe compromise. You can currently get something like that from M5Stack.
The tiny BT keyboard with horrible keybounce that I had for a while looked like this:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3601
I like to think the linked one might be better, but I haven't tried it.
It's weird how it's being advertised as a second phone - it looks like it has the same capabilities of any other android phone? Just a smaller screen and a physical keyboard
They're afraid to go full bore advertising it as a minimalist alternative. If they weren't, they would have offered more thoughtful features beyond the (admittedly great) notifications-only home screen. But that's secretly who this phone is for. I am sure they're just afraid to pigeonhole it. Calling it a second phone is silly and will sell it to about 50 people but it leaves any other potential buyer to interpret what it is and why they might want it for themselves. It's a...whatever strategy.
I know why I want it, and the early bird price (slash threat of the higher price later) is certainly compelling, but:
They’re afraid to go full bore advertising it as a minimalist alternative. If they weren’t, they would have offered more thoughtful features beyond the (admittedly great) notifications-only home screen. But that’s secretly who this phone is for. I am sure they’re just afraid to pigeonhole it. Calling it a second phone is silly and will sell it to about 50 people but it leaves any other potential buyer to interpret what it is and why they might want it for themselves. It’s a…whatever strategy.
I do think there is also just an aspect of the people running this company living in a bit of a tech bubble where they are constantly changing their phones and carrying around multiple at the same time. The "second phone" thing gets pushed constantly by tech YouTubers like Michael Fisher (who is behind Clicks), so much so that the term "daily driver" has become normal lexicon for these people. No one in the real world talks about their phone like this, it's just our phone. We don't have another one, unless it's an older model sitting in a drawer somewhere. I'm not sure YouTubers understand this, though.
100%. His handle on social media is CaptainTwoPhones, haha. It's a positively, ridiculously insulated angle. But I don't think they're entirely naive, either. I think he even acknowledged in the announcement that it's a pretty uncommon, upper-crust, eNtHuSiAsT thing to do. I can only speak for myself, but I find the notion of being so engulfed in obsession with these horrible little gadgets that if you keep two of them on you for any reason except being a professional tech reviewer or needing a second one for your job...that is, if you carry two phones just for the love of phones...well, that's extremely off-putting to me to the degree that I have nothing polite to say about it, and I think I just should stop myself instead. I know life is short and it's unsavory to 'yuck someone else's yum'. But. Meh.
I think the element of it that I don't particularly like is how they frame themselves as people who value their time and mental health because they carry around a second, intentionally limited device. They kind of play this "social media is really bad, phones are really addictive" angle but then they don't actually give up on any of that stuff because they still have their extremely expensive high-end folding phone on them at all times as well. It all feels so performative to me, like they're not actually willing to make sacrifices themselves but still want the social cred/respect from pretending to be aware of the problem and part of the solution. But they're not, really, because they're entertaining this fantasy where phone addicts can magically get their lives back without changing their relationship with phones. If anything, they are contributing to the problem by encouraging people to buy and use even more devices.
I much prefer the anti-addiction/"minimal" phones that are either a) very small or b) have an e-ink screen, but are still marketed as an actual phone (not a "secondary" device). Those manufacturers intentionally put up walls to frustrate and force the owner to change their habits and re-wire their brain, rather than pushing this fake "you can have your cake and eat it too" philosophy to combating addiction.
The biggest red flag is it’s a lot of the same folks who put out fxtec pro and that was a bit of a shit show, I’m excited but I’m sure as fuck not going to preorder
I didn't know about that. Just found this about fxtec. I guess it's smart to be cautious.
https://community.fxtec.com/topic/4070-now-that-fxtec-is-dead-lets-do-an-autopsy/
Apparently there's a tech YouTuber by the name of MrMobile who is also apart of this. I only recently heard of him through MKBHD so I would like to think that there's some accountability there but honestly you really never know.
Yeah I’m in now way trying to point and panic. But after going through the debacle with fxtec I personally will be exercising caution
That said this device looks like a dream especially if I can get lineage on it
Hiw do you know it's those people? What's your source? Fxtec sure was a letdown. Not a complete scam like the Turing Phones, but almost...
Some of the same people
This medium does a good job of saying kind of my thoughts https://medium.com/@markheijnekamp_41506/clicks-communicator-will-likely-fail-b4f450e556b4
They have other hardware they've built and shipped for years, just a keyboard case not an entire phone but that seems to be positively received
I heard that the designers of that phone were involved with the original Clicks, but it's kind of an over-generalization to say that because those guys are involved with this by-now well-established company, that this will turn out to be some kind of rip-off scheme. Clicks Technology have delivered on every promise they have made to this point. Even if their products aren't for everyone, and even if (in my experience) the first generation have some serious issues with wearing down too quickly, they absolutely do make products, they do feel good to use, they do what they say, and there's no reason to doubt they can deliver on this next one.
FYI if you like the UI in the promo, just download Niagara. It's minimalistic and one-handed. The pay wall limits customization, though. Also, there's phone cases that have keyboards built in if you miss your black berry. Here's my home screen/ ui:
Edit: I use viral as my icon pack
Also swype based keyboards are fucking amazing if you work with one hand.
The pay wall is actually insane! I bought my lifetime license back when it was 10ish dollars. But I just went to try to get the license for wife, ~45 dollars?!
Plus I do believe I remember being able to do more in the unpaid version back when I had it, now my wife can't change clock, show weather, change icons etc etc without paying.
Their last update was the "artistic" update, with new wallpapers "designed by real artists just for us". The wallpapers are very sus (ai) in my eyes. Not much has happened on the update front new feature wise for quite a while, just lots of customization.
I genuinely love this launcher, and I would find it hard to go back, but it is sad to see it go the way I see it going.
Jeez, even $10 is pricy. I think I paid $5 for nova, and that took some thought. I have only bought a handful of apps in the last like... 17 years? Most expensive was fairemail (I actually bought it twice, one from the website, one from the play store) at like, $7? But that has a feature set that nobody can touch, it's better than Thunderbird on the desktop imo. So $10 for a launcher is absolutely wild.
E: and $45 is more than what I pay for most AAA games lol
I've been looking for a mobile Linux terminal so I can ssh without hunt and peck, if this was under $200, it looks like it would be perfect...
Edit: If anyone had a recommendation for a non-build-your-own (I'm not in a living position where I can diy) mobile dumb terminal, I'm all ears!
I'd like something like this, I hate virtual keyboards compared to my old Palm smartphones.
I wish it kept the square screen but the keyboard was a slider.
This feels like a solution looking for a problem. What is the benefit of this 'companion'? If the point is really just to have a physical keyboard for messages, seems like I'd be better off with one of those little folding bluetooth keyboard for 1/10 the price.
I really miss having a physical keyboard to type on, but not enough to carry a separate device that is disconnected from my phone.
It's meant to be your real phone. They're just afraid to advertise it that way. It's truly bizarre to choose this advertising theme, because it almost causes confusion, since there have been phones in the past which truly are companion phones, totally tethered to your primary phone for their connection but besides that little (huge) dependency, were meant to be like...minimalist, distraction-free devices. Advertising the Communicator as a "second phone" absolutely summons up that same idea, in my head at least. If they did some of the app curation or de-googling of, for comparison, the SLEKE phone project, then they could full-throatedly sell this as a minimalist dream. But they don't want to lock out any kind of customer, and so they're struggling to make a case for who the customer even is supposed to be here. So they just call it a "second phone" and let you decide for yourself whether it could be a primary or a second or nothing at all. I'd buy it in a heartbeat if I didn't have a bunch of frugal reasons not to, and if they hadn't also announced an accessory so seemingly excellent that it encourages me not to give up my current phone for many years to come.
Yeah their messaging is a bit fucked. At the same time they announced the Communicator they announced the potentially best and most flexible keyboard accessory they have put out to date, and for remarkably the least cost of anything they've released. It's compatible with any phone or case that supports MagSafe, so...it's just maybe not the best time to also announce a phone whose defining feature is its keyboard?
Not to sell it short, because the colored notification LED and notification-centered launcher are both nice concepts, and the squarish screen appeals to the would-be digital minimalist in me, since it will definitely ruin many apps like Unihertz phones have been doing for years. I bet that I could own and really love this phone. The thing is though, the Power Keyboard they announced, which is compatible with my existing phone, costs less than a fifth of the price, and comes out sooner, and does more things (because you can connect it to multiple Bluetooth clients), and the format is more flexible (because you can spin your magnetically-connected phone horizontally, and your phone can maintain a traditional aspect ratio by...being your existing phone), and...yeah. It's just a weird time to announce a phone and a super cool accessory that almost completely undercuts it.
Still, I love what this company is up to, and I hope they keep at it.
IMHO it's a dumb idea to have a "companion" smartphone to a "real" smartphone. Either the thing will do for your needs all day, then you don't need a second one. Or it doesn't, then it's not the right one for you. IMO this phone should be way enough and need not be accompanied by anything. We don't actually need all that functionality in our pockets all day, every day.
Looking at the site, it appears to have everything. Even qi wireless charging
Unihertz Titan 2 Elite looks better
I think that is just a mock up. The keyboard layout is way different from the Titan 2, so I am unsure if the image of the elite is final design.
I'm fascinated by the accusation (guess?) that the Titan 2 Elite and the Communicator share a platform from some common manufacturer. They have the same screen (just to eyeball it; I have not checked the specs to compare so please don't flame me if I'm wrong) and they both have the top-left punch-out camera. They both look slick as hell and if I was in need of a phone right now I bet I could have a good time with either one, but between them I've definitely got a little more brand loyalty for Clicks since I've enjoyed their QWERTY experience more, and I also think their launcher looks slick as shit. But I've always wanted to love the Unihertz phones I've bought and my heart is always open to them finally nailing it one day. If they were built on the same platform and they both turned out to be...ya know, pretty good...I think the world would be in a great place (at least as far as QWERTY resurgence is concerned).
Click Communicator is phone purpose-built
The ad summary starts with a Russian accent but I don't know where it goes from there.
Well at least it has buttons.
Still shant replace my Nokia e90 and n900 for gathering dust.
No mobile phone used here since Edward Snowden confirmed they're listening.
... But at least it has buttons.
I like it.