Miss your BlackBerry? This new Android phone | Tech News

If you miss the rugged, environment friendly simplicity of your outdated BlackBerry phone, there’s a new Android system on the town that’s aiming straight for your coronary heart. Announced at commerce show CES 2026 in Las Vegas, the Clicks Communicator appears to be like similar to your devoted BlackBerry and is designed, because the title suggests, to be a communication hub that triages messages from all your apps.

The catch right here is that it isn’t a standalone phone, regardless of operating Android 16. Instead, the Communicator pairs to your present smartphone to remove that system’s distractions and depart you with a “purpose-built smartphone designed to complement today’s flagships by prioritising context, input, and control,” as Clicks places it in a press release.

The Communicator runs Android 16 however can pair with each Android and iPhone units for use as a secondary phone. The thought is you possibly can reply to messages from completely different apps in a single place, with out having to hop into the apps themselves and grow to be distracted.

“Communicator is to a smartphone what a Kindle is to an iPad,” stated Jeff Gadway, Chief Marketing Officer at Clicks. “It’s a complementary product that stands on its own, optimised for a specific purpose. In the case of Clicks Communicator, that means communicating with confidence in a noisy world.”

Clicks is a enterprise based by Kevin Michaluk, the founder of now-defunct BlackBerry fan and editorial website Crackberry, Michael Fisher, the tech YouTuber who goes by MrMobile, Jeff Gadway, former BlackBerry director of product advertising, and Adrian Li Mow Ching, who’s CEO. Its present merchandise embrace phone instances that add bodily keyboards for iPhones and Android telephones.

The new Communicator has an earpiece, 3.5mm headphone jack, and importantly, a BlackBerry-style bodily keyboard beneath the 4.03-inch touchscreen that hides a fingerprint sensor beneath the spacebar. All the keys are contact delicate, identical to the BlackBerry Passport from 2014, which helps you to scroll by way of lists, apps and menus with out touching the screen.

Clicks has teamed up with Niagara Launcher, a in style app for Android telephones which you could set up to interchange your phone’s default launcher interface. It is a minimalist look that simplifies apps into an alphabetical record, and in photographs from Clicks, seems to record your messages in chronological order so you possibly can reply to them.

On the aspect, the ability button could be programmed to glow completely different colors relying on your preferences to show who has messages, or should you get pinged by a sure app.

You’ll additionally have the ability to buy the Communicator in numerous colors and the back is removable for Nokia-esque customisation.

For a secondary, companion system that may’t be used on its own, Clicks is asking $499, with an early chicken price of £399 total if you’re keen to pay $199 to ‘reserve’ yours earlier than February 27.

“You will be invited to choose your Communicator color and Covers closer to launch later this year,” the company says, with no particular date. The system was unveiled at CES, however solely with dummy models and no working model given to journalists to check out.

Where some corporations have opted to release so-called dumbphones to appeal to people who need to disconnect from the noise of the trendy smartphone, Clicks is taking one other route. It has admitted you most likely can’t go with out your smartphone, and is mixing a play for nostalgia with your need to own a system that doesn’t beg for your consideration.

Whether or not you need to carry round a second phone simply for that’s up to you.