this device is designed to be your secondary smartphone
In this economy?
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
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lol imagine having two phones, takes years to save up just to buy one!
Have you tried being rich? I highly recommend it.
Could also try being frugal, there are plenty of smart phones for 200-300$ that will do everything your $1200 iPhone will do with a longer battery life. Most people I know spend more on a phone annually than I spend on my last car! And no u don't need a new phone every year or two. Currently typing from my Moto G I got for 200$ new.
I don't buy a new phone more often than probably one every five or six, so I don't really mind buying an expensive flagship.
The problem tends to be though that people buy an expensive phone and then later have financial difficulties. And people criticise them for having an expensive phone as if they could have known that that would be an issue a year or so down the line.
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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.
Maybe a way for them to be able to say one day: "yes, it's not selling in big numbers, but we aren't competing against the others anyway, ours is a second phone, so it's not a failure!" I mean, I don't even know if that makes sense, but it's the only spin I can give to 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.
The hardware security measures graphene wants are very expensive. Plus, GOS wants quick android security patche
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Can it run Linux? Because if it runs any fascism-tech from Google it’s a non-starter
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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.
Can it do Linux touch and ditch android?
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!
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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...
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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?!
Some people do that, most commonly with one being a "work" phone. But I think the idea is insane for the majority of people.
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I saw this kickstarter alternative the other day. IMO if it becomes a reality it would be better simply due to the fact that it fully supports linux instead of android.
I'm gonna keep an eye on it and see if it ends up becoming reality after the kickstarter.
Yeah that looks mega cool but it's not a cellular device, so I'd still need a phone. I'm really not interested in carrying more devices.
I really want a Linux phone but I e played with them and they are just not to the point of being able to use as a sole device yet.
18hr of battery with the display off is a killer, and even if you could get an m.2 modem working in it m.2 modems tend to be far less efficient than the ones integrated to cell phone hardware. At least it my experience with Quectel and Sierra m.2 modems is representative of other brands.
Does it track and sell personal data?
Itself? I wouldn't think so. But like almost all Android phones it comes with Google services so there's that. They said the Bootloader will be unlockable to that should be able to be mitigated...
I'd say less than a mainstream flagship.
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
If it had an unlocked bootloader where i could install ubuntu touch i'd buy it. Otherwise naw.
The bootloader will be unlockable, what ROMs will be installable is going to depend on the community
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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.
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I miss Palm and WebOS.
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.
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