Clever Clicks
Ben Schoon
Clever girl:
Clicks Power takes the keyboard available in iPhone cases and cases for the Pixel 10 series, Galaxy S25, and Motorola Razr devices and detaches it from the device. Embracing Qi2 and MagSafe, the accessory can be attached to the back of your device and extends outwards to reveal the keyboard when it’s time to use it.
This new take on Clicks means that you’ll be able to use a physical keyboard through virtually any device. While it’s designed to work with Qi2 and MagSafe, a magnetic case or even an adhesive magnet ring will suffice. The keyboard connects over Bluetooth instead of requiring USB-C/Lightning, meaning it can also be used wirelessly with your phone, or other devices like a tablet, TV, or virtually anything else.
Back in 2024, I bought the first product from Clicks, their iPhone case which included a physical keyboard. It was part fun, part ridiculous, but not very practical. Especially if you happened to have an iPhone Pro Max, which made the device so comically long. I likened it to the real life "Bananaphone", but Raffi's fictional phone would have been arguably more ergonomic. The iPhone + Clicks keyboard was just so incredibly top-heavy. And when you put it in your pocket, well, the jokes write themselves...
Anyway, my main thought/feedback at the time was this:
Honestly, I wish Clicks had made a horizontal keyboard. That sounds potentially even more crazy but whenever I'm using this thing, I can't help but feel that an elongated keyboard would both feel better to use in your hands (the vertical keyboard is too narrow for comfortable two-hand use) and would further highlight the freed-up screen real estate. Right now, using the iPhone in landscape mode is a bit silly for everything beyond watching video or playing games. The digital keyboard when used in that position takes up too much screen real estate. A landscape Clicks could and would solve this!
You can use it horizontally to type now, but it requires even further breaking of your brain to type that way. And it's just even more awkward to hold that way. But a horizontal keyboard at the bottom of the device... I think there's something there. But they also must have thought about this and concluded it wouldn't work well for some reason or reasons.
Well, those crazy sonofabitches did it. It's not exactly the case I imagined, it's far smarter than that. By using MagSafe, it can latch on to the back with a keyboard that extends down when you're holding it either vertically or horizontally!
The fact that it's a battery pack too giving you an additional 2,150 mAh of capacity – the original Clicks case didn't give you this bonus despite its size – is just icing on the cake. I'm sure the whole package will be a bit unwieldy to carry around on your phone regularly, but as a battery pack – something I almost always have on me anyway – this seems like a great little package in your bag.1 It's also $109 versus the $159 cost of the original – or $79 if you pre-order ahead of its Spring 2026 ship date, which made it a no-brainer buy to me to try out, if nothing else. I'll report back.2
One more thing:
Joe Rossignol
Um, the Clicks team is cooking. At the same time they unveiled the new battery/keyboard accessory, they also unveiled their really big idea/product:
The company behind the BlackBerry-like Clicks Keyboard accessory for the iPhone today unveiled a new Android 16 smartphone called the Clicks Communicator.
The purpose-built device is designed to be used as a second phone alongside your iPhone, with the intended focus being communication over content consumption. It runs a custom Android launcher that offers a curated selection of messaging apps like Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, and Gmail directly on the home screen.
There have been a number of players who have tried to create a "second device" – something you carry alongside your smartphone. In a way, even the device(s) that OpenAI is working on with Jony Ive is one of these. It's a category that's an acknowledgement that nothing is going to be able to fully replace the smartphone anytime soon, so better to pitch it as a complement. None of these have worked to date, but that doesn't mean they will never work, it just means it's a hard sell, literally, because smartphones are already expensive and can technically do everything these complementary devices do – and a lot more, of course.
Of course, that's part of the pitch too. The growing desire – at least stated desire – to breakaway from your smartphone with a purpose-built device that still allows you to do useful things. In this case, email and messaging. Again, it's not a bad pitch, it just never seems to work at scale because again, there's a literal cost associated (and maybe the revealed preference is for one device after all).
There are several clever features here like the side button that glows different colors depending on where/who a message is from – something I've long wished Apple could better surface without looking at a notification (they have okay ways to do this with haptics, but this seems smarter/better). And the fact that the whole physical keyboard is touch-enabled (on the top of the keys), so it is effectively a trackpad. Again, clever.
Anyway, I'm intrigued by the Clicks Communicator but I'm going to hold off on pre-ordering this one – though there is a deal too, a $199 deposit knocks the total price down to $399 (from the regular $499 price). This will obviously come down to how well both the hardware and software is done. Nailing one of them is hard, nailing both seems almost impossible for all but the biggest/best smartphone makers – and some might say all but Apple! But I hope it's great, it could be a fun/useful throwback to the BlackBerry.3
1 I'm also slightly worried that the add-on covers the lower camera on the iPhone Pro, as you can see in their announcement video. Again, maybe not a huge deal if you just plan to use it to type/re-charge. But worth noting... ↩
2 This is not a paid placement, I swear! I'm ordering it just as anyone else can. I'm just excited for their new idea per my critique for their old product. ↩
3 Consider this another reminder to check out the great 2023 movie about RIM.