this device is designed to be your secondary smartphone
In this economy?
lol imagine having two phones, takes years to save up just to buy one!
Work often issues work phones. They’re likely to be quite swayed by something focused on communication.
That’s their marketing pitch but it has every feature you’d need to make it your only phone, which is my plan.
It’s such a weird marketing pitch though…
Can Communicator be used as my primary phone? Yes! Absolutely. Communicator is a fully standalone smartphone that runs Android 16, with all the apps, 5G connectivity and Wi-fi. We think many people will use this as their primary phone while others will use it as a complement to a flagship iPhone, Galaxy, Pixel, etc.
Wake me when there’s a slider.
Lengthwise, nokia n900 style, with a smaller screen (actually this is 4", that’s one box ticked, prefer 5" tho), and a bigger battery, and an open OS, and sd card expansion, basically an anti-todays-phone I guess…
I had an n900, it was my worst best phone. The software was often arse, the resistive screen was arse, but that keyboard was god tier.
If someone made a modernised version without a bunch of slop I’d buy 2 today just incase they went out of production.
I actually stumbled across my Blackberry Torch in storage and gave a great big sigh. I don’t use my phone as a media consumption device as much as many people. I understand I’m in the minority, but its comms first for me.
It actually does have an SD card slot. And headphone jack.
I’ve been wishing to use an old feature phone for that one’s advertised purpose. This one is more interesting than refurbishing a hopelessly outdated phone because it’s going to actually work.
In any work setting where it is common to have a work phone and a personal phone, this would make an ideal work phone
Can it run Linux? Because if it runs any fascism-tech from Google it’s a non-starter
Isn’t Android Linux? That was the trench defended when I last checked a few years ago.
Android uses a modified version of the Linux kernel.
So where is the running prototype? Even a shitty one made with an esp32 and a Display so one can get a feel for it. as far as ive seen they only showed non functional mockups…
Would love for this to be a success but at this time I’m not holding my breath.
They’ve shipped hardware before so I don’t think it’s total vaporware. They’ve said the non-functional devices they’ve shown at CES had the real screen and keyboard hardware so it seems somewhat far along in the manufacturing/design stage. But yeah, everyone would like to see the real deal.
I miss Blackberry a lot but this ain’t it.
The Spacebar has a built-in fingerprint sensor, which could be handy for unlocking the phone quickly. The keypad is touch-sensitive, which means that you can slide your fingers over it to scroll through messages. And before you ask, yes, it also has a 4.03-inch OLED touchscreen display for those of us who like scrolling on a smoother surface.
Some of you may also be pleased to know that the Clicks Communicator has a 3.5mm headphone jack and that it supports microSD cards for storage expansion. It ships with 256GB storage and you can add a microSD card with up to 2TB of capacity.
The device runs Android 16, supports Qi2 wireless charging, has a USB-C port, and has a 50-MP rear camera with optical image stabilization, alongside a 24-MP front camera. It’s powered by a 4nm MediaTek chip that has 5G support. It’s a dual-SIM phone with one physical SIM slot and an eSIM
It also has NFC for mobile payment support. I’m not seeing many compromises here except perhaps the camera and processor. I’m gonna use this as my next phone.
The Clicks marketing team has been marketing this as a “second device”. I think that’s a miss-step. Very few people want to have two phones. They exist, but it seems like this device should be a completely capable phone on it’s own. It’ll be a niche device either way but I think the “people who want a small phone with physical buttons” niche is larger than the “people who want two phones of of which is small with physical buttons” crowd. And it causes confusion. Some people saw the announcement and didn’t realize it’s a full fledged independent phone…
Maybe they should reach out to the GrapheneOS team and see if there could be a partnership of some type there.
Unfortunately the GrapheneOS team said it doesn’t meet their requirements. Their requirements are suuuuuuper specific which is why it’s only on Pixel devices.
They have said that the bootloader can be unlocked, so some sort of ROM support is possible.
GrapheneOS complete requirements:
- Support for using alternate operating systems including full hardware security functionality
- Complete monthly Android Security Bulletin patches without any regular delays longer than a week for device support code (firmware, drivers and HALs)
- At least 5 years of updates from launch for device support code with phones (Pixels now have 7) and 7 years with tablets
- Device support code updated to new monthly, quarterly and yearly releases of AOSP within several months to provide new security improvements (Pixels receive these in the month they’re released)
- Linux 6.1, 6.6 or 6.12 Generic Kernel Image (GKI) support
- Hardware accelerated virtualization usable by GrapheneOS (ideally pKVM to match Pixels but another usable implementation may be acceptable)
- Hardware memory tagging (ARM MTE or equivalent)
- Hardware-based coarse grained Control Flow Integrity (CFI) for baseline coverage where type-based CFI isn’t used or can’t be deployed (BTI/PAC, CET IBT or equivalent)
- PXN, SMEP or equivalent
- PAN, SMAP or equivalent
- Isolated radios (cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, etc.), GPU, SSD, media encode / decode, image processor and other components
- Support for A/B updates of both the firmware and OS images with automatic rollback if the initial boot fails one or more times
- Verified boot with rollback protection for firmware
- Verified boot with rollback protection for the OS (Android Verified Boot)
- Verified boot key fingerprint for yellow boot state displayed with a secure hash (non-truncated SHA-256 or better)
- StrongBox keystore provided by secure element
- Hardware key attestation support for the StrongBox keystore
- Attest key support for hardware key attestation to provide pinning support
- Weaver disk encryption key derivation throttling provided by secure element
- Insider attack resistance for updates to the secure element (Owner user authentication required before updates are accepted)
- Inline disk encryption acceleration with wrapped key support
- 64-bit-only device support code
- Wi-Fi anonymity support including MAC address randomization, probe sequence number randomization and no other leaked identifiers
- Support for disabling USB data and also USB as a whole at a hardware level in the USB controller
- Reset attack mitigation for firmware-based boot modes such as fastboot mode zeroing memory left over from the OS and delaying opening up attack surface such as USB functionality until that’s completed
- Debugging features such as JTAG or serial debugging must be inaccessible while the device is locked
I really hope GOS does find an OEM willing to throw the kitchen sink at this.
They already have. They won’t say who it is but it’s in the works.
The hardware security measures graphene wants are very expensive. Plus, GOS wants quick android security patche
Even LineageOS would be amazing.
Agreed
I’m not seeing many compromises here
That’s because it’s really small. And has a weird square shape. It’s the display. And the fact that they’ve only committed to 2 years of updates.
It looks very cool, and it’s cool to see actually interesting phones. But it’s not for me. It’s very strange to me that people would rather a physical keyboard and a tiny display. Guaranteed I can type faster on a virtual keyboard…
They’ve announced 5 years of support.
And it’s small but not really small. Here is a 3d printed mockup next to a Galaxy S25 Ultra
It’s every bit as wide, just shorter.
But I meant compromises that would make it not usable as a phone.
They’ve announced 5 years of support.
Where?
E: site currently reads “We’re committing to a minimum of 4 years of Android version updates and 5 years of security updates.” So good for them for listening to feedback.
it’s small but not really small
I’m referring to the display, not the body. It’s 4". Absolutely tiny, and a weird shape.
I had a Blackberry Curve in like 2012 when everyone was using iphone and android and I loved that damn thing. Other than the Nokia Lumia it was the best phone I ever had.
I would use this.
The BlackBerry Curve was great. I kept using mine until support ended for most of the apps I needed on BlackBerry OS :(
I still keep it as a spare phone and for travel.
This could be my next phone.
But, but, though. Will the OS be non-proprietary? Will I be able to actually use all the apps I would ideally want? Because, much as I love my Samsung Galaxy, I really do wish I could remove a lot of its bloatware off the phone that I know I won’t ever use.
You can, without root even! Take a look at uad-ng (universal android debloater). Comes with a community-curated list which sorts APKs into 5 tiers from “recommended to uninstall” to “yeah don’t, your phone needs this to boot”. Apps disabled through this do not come back after updates.
Removed 140+ apps from my Xiaomi, 120+ from my GFs Samsung S24, and 90+ from my brothers Motorola Edge something.
There’s always LineageOS for now
Wow, very interesting. But being able to root it is pretty much a must, for me. I wonder if this will give users that freedom.
They have confirmed that you can unlock the bootloader to you’ll be able to root it yes.
Very nice!
Haha haha h haha h haha haha…but also: no. Of course not.
I’d eat one if they offer root options. Or a firmware. Or a major update. Or anything else beside a pricetag and the wish to never hear from you again.
They have confirmed that you can unlock the bootloader, and are claiming 5 years of updates.
They have shipped hardware before and seem like a somewhat reputable company. They haven’t made a phone before though so we shall see.
Aren’t the 5 yrs now mandatory in the EU? And unlocking the BL I can do on most phones. Doesn’t help a lot though unless you do it all yourself. So I’d still wonder if root will be possible. I like to own the devices I buy 😊
Unless you do it all yourself? What more do you need? An unlocked bootloader means custom roms and rooting are possible, right?
possible, yes. But usually noone does those things for these smaller fringe devices that are not mainstream. So, it’s either do it yourself or be happy you unlocked a bootloader to…have an unlocked bootloader :) And with each iteration of android it became harder and more frustrating. Hence I’m done with android.
I suppose we could all band together and send them email after email asking for it… I suppose…
I love your optimism, you must be new to this 😁 But yeah sure, we could. I probably just grew bitter over the last decade of total enshittification
I might actually use this as my primary phone (I agree with others who say marketing this as a 2nd phone was a mistake) if it gets e/os/ or grapheneos support
We need two phones now?!
I do have two. One just for at home for all the banking and depot-apps that I would surely not carry around with me outside. And also because exactly those won’t run in an emulator.
Some people do that, most commonly with one being a “work” phone. But I think the idea is insane for the majority of people.
Agreed
“There are dozens of us!”
Can I close the keyboard with the ‘back’ button?
I wonder what the profit margins on this will be 🤔
