Clicks' Communicator ships in December with 12GB of RAM

Clicks has finished the specification of its keyboard-first Android phone and moved the bigger numbers in before the hardware ships. The Communicator will arrive in December with 12GB of RAM, a 4,350mAh battery and Android 17 out of the box, up from the 8GB, 4,000mAh and Android 16 the London company showed when it announced the device in January.

What has changed

The memory bump is the headline. Clicks originally planned 8GB of RAM for a handset aimed squarely at messaging, email and calendar work rather than mobile gaming, and the extra 4GB buys more room to keep those apps alive. The battery has grown from 4,000mAh to 4,350mAh, a small increase that the company says is rated for more than 800 charge cycles. The software position has moved furthest: the Communicator was due to launch on Android 16 with two years of major upgrades, and it now ships on Android 17 with three years of guaranteed major operating system updates and five years of security patches. Reservation holders can use the Clicks configurator to pick a colour — Smoke, Onyx or Clover — along with a keyboard layout in English QWERTY, French AZERTY, German QWERTZ, Korean or Arabic, and add one of the magnetically attached charging covers with Qi wireless charging and NFC built in.

The price has a deadline on it

The Communicator is still listed at its $499 launch price, but only until 30 September; after that it rises to $649. Clicks has announced new accessories and service plans alongside the final specification. Nothing about the physical premise has changed: this is a phone with a real keyboard under the screen, made by a company that built its reputation on keyboard cases for iPhones and Pixels and is now betting that a slice of buyers will pay for buttons again.

Our opinion

A keyboard phone lives or dies on how long the software stays current, and three years of Android upgrades is the weak point in an otherwise sensible package. Samsung gives mid-range buyers six years of operating system updates and its flagships seven, so a $499 handset that stops at three will feel dated while its keys are still perfectly good. Clicks deserves credit for the rest of the update: more memory and a bigger battery announced after the marketing has been written is a rare flash of honesty, and it suggests the company is listening to the people who put money down for a reservation. The 12GB is also a hedge in a year when memory prices have been climbing, which makes the launch pricing look deliberate rather than arbitrary. If you have been waiting for a modern spiritual successor to the BlackBerry, this is closer to the brief than anything else on sale, and the September deadline is a genuine decision point rather than a manufactured one. Just go in knowing the hardware will outlive the software support.