Clicks – Physical keyboard for iPhone

For the creator of this product (and to any other creators launching soon): don't listen to the keyboard jockeys saying it will fail. We (commenters here) are essentially NPCs in your world. We're not your narrow target market, just some gawkers addicted to typing "news.yc..." into our browsers, maybe with nothing better to do. And although we sound confident, we really don't know if it'll fail, or take off, or pivot to a successful product. Good luck--and major props on the launch, the landing page looks great!

ps. It will succeed.

I both love this and am horrified. It looks like it'd turn a Pro Max into a 9 inch tall phone. Since it's a case, you'd need a new one each phone upgrade. (I used to do this with the Apple battery cases, until I came to my senses and/or magsafe.) Although, I still occasionally long for the blind accuracy of the old Blackberry keyboard.

I think I'd prefer an adjustable magsafe attached keyboard that can do either landscape or portrait, though. Sadly, I don't see ctrl, alt or arrow keys. SSH won't benefit as much.

All that said, if this were $50, I'd already have ordered it.

Would seriously consider buying this if it were a case with a back-sliding landscape keyboard. Something like:

https://www.cnet.com/a/img/resize/fd8703ad0b0ec545ac98701c39...

This made me realise how much I'd love a physical keyboard on my phone.

But not like this, this is too long and I don't think one will have a pleasant typing experience with this.

I thought about this one for a few minutes, but I can't think of a good way to integrate a keyboard in a smartphone case, that will give you the experience of a blackberry or similar.

The slide-out ones that you could use in horizontal orientation are probably the best way I know of, but I wish something similar could be feasible in vertical orientation.

EDIT: I just realised that the coolest way would be, if the phone display is only as large as the current phones minus the keyboard, and then a physical keyboard beneath it. The phone would be physically as large as the phones today and you would have a superior typing experience. Only problem would be watching videos or images which are all either 16:9 or 21:9 (or vice versa). And I'd personally trade the screen size for a physical keyboard

It’s incredibly rare that I can type even a single sentence correctly on the iPhone. In that one it came out ‘in’ and not ‘on’ for example. In that one I typed sample not example. I got that last one right! I see the arguments from both sides but it’s a real shame the design space of smartphones has become so conservative. Such intensely personal devices deserve to be more varied. If I thought I could build some sort of cyberdeck with a 5G radio and reliable Bluetooth for a headset I think I might get a kick out of that. And then I’d probably go back to the iPhone because it works better and has better battery life. “Probanly”.

It was supposed to be a joke! Not inspiration! https://i.redd.it/g8o4nu49rfz51.jpg

I like having a physical keyboard, but not like this... it makes the phone too long. A slide out is preferred. I'm just going to stick with a regular bluetooth keyboard.

I recently bought Samsung Galaxy add on keyboard, on a whim, to see if it would work with my iPhone. It sits over the screen where the onscreen keyboard is situated. On eBay it said “Bluetooth” but had no obvious signs of charging. Didn’t work with the iPhone. Next hypothesis was something clever with NFC.

Nope. Zero electronics. The reverse of the PCB has pads that fit over regions on the screen. On the front of the PCB, tactile dome switches short each pad through to a plane, presumably capacitively coupled to the hand.

(Edited for detail)

Why won’t anyone do this for iPhones? (Patents or market?)

I doubt this thing will get anywhere, but this discussion thread is making me nostalgic about the wild times of smartphone design in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Motorola Droid. HTC Touch. Palm Pre. Nokia N900/N95/N97 and their other crazy form factors. All the different Blackberrys.

Phones were sliding, folding, twisting. Then at some point everyone decided that a glass rectangle was the only way to go and that was it.

It's a pity that the Textblade never went into real mass production. It was a very cool concept to have a tiny mobile keyboard with multitouch keys.

Article back in 2019: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/04/10/the-textblade-key...

For anyone interested in something closer to the feel of the original Bold keyboard, the Fairberry[0] uses the keyboard from the BB Q10, which is excellent and can be had for about $5 a piece. They can look pretty decent[1][2] and are more easily removed.

If anyone wants one PM me, I'll mail you a couple. I've got like 30 of them.

[0]: https://github.com/Dakkaron/Fairberry [1]: https://imgur.com/a/wYub8JD [2]: https://imgur.com/a/DLhlY7m

What I want is a physical smartphone keyboard with nine keys. The one with three letters per key. I've never been faster and more accurate at typing on my phone than when these were a thing. I have pretty small hands, but even for me those full-size mini-keyboards are too imprecise to make them much better than a touch keyboard.

Phones with physical keyboards: https://www.unihertz.com/collections/titan-series

Unihertz Titans

I'm kinda surprised that no-one has mentioned that languages other than English exist. Virtual keyboards, while a bit clunky, allow to easily switch input languages, and most of the world for whom English isn't their native language use this feature very very often. Physical keyboards for laptops solve this issue by having different keyboard layouts for different languages (and are usually geared towards that language, with English being just possible to use in addition to the primary language), but for smartphone screens the keyboard is just too small, it won't realistically be a good idea.

I'm saying this as a person who loves physical buttons and everything quite a lot, but for any non-English user this keyboard would be s non-starter

It's kind of weird to me that it starts from $139, a price range where you can buy a 65% Keychron mech keyboard[1], _and_ stuff like the Pinephone Keyboard[2]. The latter is not exactly comparable, since its more like a mini-keyboard stuck into a mini-sized case, but I still feel like $139 is a lot for something that you can't use beyond a single generation of a device. Maybe if it was modular and you could take out the keyboard from the case for easy upgradibility or something, the price could be justified?

[1]: https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-k7-ultra-slim-wir... [2]: https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-pinephone-pro-keyboard-...

Neat idea, but at $140, being phone specific, and just the ergonomics of holding the phone from the bottom when it is now an extra 2 inches taller all sound pretty bad.

Also concerning that no where in the landing page does it specify how it connects, or show an example of how "easy" it is to put on and take off (On second glance - it is shown in passing 2 minutes into the 10 minute long intro video.)

Not to mention being called "clicks" but no audio demo of what the keys actually sound like?

I wonder how the microphone input and speaker ouput are affected with the keyboard cover. As shocking as it seems, not all iPhone users use AirPods for their calls.

I really want to love this. I’ve been asking for something like it for years. I feel like I’d also need a low-mounted popsocket, or I can already feel my pinkies breaking from the weight supporting this.

First it was flip phones. Now BlackBerry has come full circle. Can’t wait until windows phones and beepers make a comeback.

Buried deep in the FAQ, you have to take it out of the case to use wired CarPlay on USB-C iPhones. That is a real bummer.

> Clicks for iPhone 15 Pro (and models that use USB-C) only support fast charging while Clicks is on your iPhone. At this time, the USB-C connector will not allow for both Clicks to be connected to the iPhone and allow for data and charging. This means using wired CarPlay or transfer data will require you to remove your iPhone from Clicks. Listening to music via Bluetooth and connecting to CarPlay wirelessly will still work with Clicks installed.

https://www.clicks.tech/faqs

I love this so much, but it’s a missed opportunity IMO:

I want one for my 13 Mini, and (secondarily, even for normal sized iPhones) it should use the M600i/P1i keyboard

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/images/reviews/m600/m600-fron...

QW is one key, you rock left for Q and right for W, or rather you tap on each side! It works amazingly well, especially with modern autocorrect id imagine, and makes it easier to hit the key.

Or you could the TouchPal approach and just do QW as one key entirely and use autocorrect for the rest of it

I wonder how this would feel in hand, grip seems to have unbalanced weight when I mimic on my iPhone pro max 11. Like it wants to tip over but maybe if you really have something physical at the bottom it is not that bad.

Blackberry sacrificed screen for the keyboard so balance was all OK.

I also caught myself thinking these buttons were too round and too tiny as compared to my on-screen keyboard. Also not having the luxury of seeing all my special characters appear on the keys when pressing the 123/#+= etc to toggle keyboards would be something to get used to. E.g. Type a {} or ~.

Strange choice to make this portrait instead of landscape.

If I'm going through the trouble of attaching a hardware keyboard, I want the largest size that's still practical.

A landscape keyboard of the same type might even be possible to type on with ten fingers. Which seems like it would be a massive productivity boost for many people.

This is just a hardware version of the standard iOS keyboard. I doubt that the benefits of having physical keys are worth the trouble.

Before I put down cash I have basic questions, like “how do I type a square bracket?” and “how do I type a backtick?”

The on-screen keyboard is pretty good, but makes coding and typing markdown hard. Will this solve this?

Also, this seems to be missing cursor keys. How do I move back and forward precisely? If the onscreen keyboard is hidden, I can’t even long press on space to move the cursor.

If I was one of those people who worked most of their day on iphone I'd be into this.

Missing a trick with no arrow keys though because the worst part of iOS typing is moving the caret.

Somewhere Mike Lazaridis is banging a table trying to explain to a room full of idiots that he invented all of this.

I'm fascinated by this thread for many reasons, but something interesting (or baffling to me?) that I don't see mentioned yet is the marketing or target audience for this thing.

The tagline is "Create without limits". The page says "the first creator keyboard" as well as "Maximize your screen space for apps and content while you create with Clicks." In one of the videos on the page, the big pitch is that this can "double your effective screen size when you're working on captioning your Instagram stories".

Is this keyboard specifically marketed at content creators / influencers? Why? Is there some special market for this that I'm not seeing? Is adding a caption to your instagram story really something that needs extra screen space?

Curious - do folks not use swiftkey-like onscreen keyboards? I feel like I'm legions faster using this style on a phone vs tapping. I get preferring a physical keyboard if you're tapping, but I can't imagine going back once I got used to swiping.

This is a bit long.. also, I will loose the ability to use my rugged case or any case for that matter, and with that length it’ll be more prone to getting dropped (or stolen if you put your phone in your back pocket), and if you decide to keep it home and only use it when you are comfortable on your couch, you still need to get into the hassle of attaching it and even removing your case, risk damaging your lightning port from how frequent you will do it, all that to use it for .. a minuet of texting? I don’t think so. Unless the physical keyboard is properly designed and integrated within the phone form factor, it will be another gimmicky toy you will only use it for few weeks at max.

The number of comments on this thread is data. I'm not sure what this data suggests, but it has to mean something that (at the time of commenting) there are nearly 500 comments. That's a lot more than I would have expected.

>Being first has its perks: >Special founder's badge >Serial number >Exclusive VIP support

Are they implying you get a low serial number as an early adopter, or are they going to stop putting serial numbers on future hardware?

I was looking around recently to see if I could find some kind of attachable physical thumb-typing keyboard / landscape phone holder combo for my Pixel, after convincing myself that my GPD Win 2 handheld computer was really, truly dead [0]. Couldn't find anything, so now I'm rather jealous of the iPhone crowd seeing this today.

[0] Can't recommend GPD products - they're just not made to last, and rely on hacked-up Windows installations to drive them. Which is a shame, because the Win 2's form-factor and cursor control scheme are basically perfect, and also seemingly unique.

Have a sudden urge to rewatch the BlackBerry movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3icHg3N5ym0

Wonder how they’re getting around patent encumbrance. Ryan Seacrest already tried this a decade ago.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/ryan-seacrest-invests-in-typo-iph...

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/typos-hardware-keyboard-for...

A question I always ask is why we can't control our phones via desktop computers yet. It's 2024; this should be possible and mainstream without half-baked solutions like Airdroid or unacceptable workarounds like rooting your iPhone.

I sit in front of a full-size keyboard and mouse literally all day, yet when I need to do something on my phone I'm forced to physically pick it up and use its horrible tiny little keyboard to achieve something I could achieve in 10% of the time on a PC.

It's fascinating how phones have come full circle. One of my first cell phones had a full QWERTY keyboard with physical keys that was exposed when you slid the top face of the phone sideways. Many phones in that era had similar full keyboards.

The fact that the iPod touch, iPhone, iPads, and other surface devices didn't need physical keys was seen as more modern and desirable at the time. Now it looks like people are circling back around and wanting physical keys again.

History moves in a helix I guess.

Interesting concept, but landing page is giving lots of red flags. This is the entrypoint for all of your customers; it should be flawless. Especially when posting to a tech-centric site.

Body needs an 'overflow-x: hidden' rule, or a wrapping div to the rotated images. The main heading is off-center. And almost 18 MB of images on pageload is wild, see what https://pagespeed.web.dev says.

Keyboards are excellent for people with accessibility needs (which may include people with presbyopia, who could use the screen space, as well as people with dexterity issues). However, the problem with it being a case is that they need to make new ones every year.

The competition is any external Bluetooth keyboard (or, for iPhone 15+ users, external USB-C keyboards as well). There are plenty of such options available online on Amazon or Temu etc including compact and folding options.

I find it awesome. Maybe it is targeted to my age group. Sadly I have an iPhone 13 and won't upgrade in the next 2-3 years. Otherwise I would order it right now.

I wonder if you could do a split keyboard and have it hanging off the sides like little winglets to get around the bending moment issues. Of course I have no idea what it would actually feel like to type on something like that, and it'd look weird as hell and make the phone oddly wide, but can't help but be curious about it.

You have my permission to steal this idea if anybody wants to hive that a shot. ;]

I don't know if this will succeed or not, there might be market for it. As a developer what I'm still looking for is a top notch quality small foldable keyboard that I can use with Termux if I feel to throw some code and don't have a laptop with me. I have literally looked everywhere on Amazon and Ebay only to find cheap chinese foldable junks that definitely won't last a week.

It's mentioned in the MrMobile video, but should be noted this company is also run by the co-founders of F(x)tec. Glad to see they're still investing in keeb phones, even if it's just for iPhone for now. The F(x)tec Pro1 was a cool phone, but a hard sell considering how Android updates work. Still holding out for someone to make a new keyboard phone/accessory for Android.

Is the idea that you always have this on, making your phone much longer (and potentially more unbalanced) than it was before, or that you keep it around for when you want to text? Seems like you always want to keep it on because you have to hook it up to the port, but you're adding a fair bit of length to the phone.

I generally enjoy Mr Mobile's reviews, but I just don't know about this product.

I have a feeling this is going to get bent in my pocket and damage the charging port. A desk stand with integrated keyboard would have been better.

It doesn't support MagSafe so it's not something I would buy but it's very interesting. If it supported MagSafe and was only $100 I'd probably would have bought it just to try it out. Yes, it would make my 15 Pro Max a monster but it would be interesting to try.

That it plugs into the USB-C port is both expected and worrisome (also none of the product photos show this for some reason). I know it has the whole case to help but I'd be worried about putting strain on the USB-C port while your hands are down on the keyboard. Again, the case will help but you are absolutely adding strain to the port, the whole phone's weight is on it aside from what the case can help relieve which can't be much since it's not rigid. It's "Liquid Silicon" but since the phone plugs into the USB-C/Lightning in the bottom you probably have to first plug the phone in, then pull the case over the top/sides of the phone meaning its ability to reduce strain is extremely limited

I would be more down if it wasn’t tied to the generation of phone.

Also I’d love a keyboard with more buttons personally. I know I’m in a tiny minority here but I get ~70 WPM on an iPhone keyboard but if I have to do symbols or anything it goes down to like 4.

I know you can buy a separate Bluetooth keyboard but then you need to rest your phone and stuff.

I could not find the remote to my TV this morning and attempted to use my iPhone instead. By the time I arrived at the correct UI my 3 yr old had already found a PS4 controller and was able to control the TV and navigate to where he wanted to go... I only needed to notch up the volume.

Assistive devices are necessary for a large audience, as they allow users to leverage their strengths. Just as my 3yr old beat my phone speed with a game controller, users will be able to type faster than me with this keyboard.

It is nice to have a single device that tries to do it all, but interacting with flat UI buttons in a 2D plane of light and glass is limited to a very small set of sensory inputs and therefore cumbersome for anyone to use. There is physically no way around this HCI problem without adding additional hardware. Thanks for working to bridge the gap!

I can type like 45 WPM on my phone keyboard right now. I'm definitely faster on a full size keyboard, but I'm not sure if I would be faster on this small keyboard. I know a lot of people wanted keyboard like this when the iPhone first came out, but now with a lot of practice using mobile keyboards, I'm not sure it's needed.

One of the main arguments for hardware keyboards was you could type without looking. I don't really look at my phone keyboard when typing, I roughly know the spacing of the letters. Plus auto correct is really good at this point, so when I do make mistakes the phone usually just corrects them.

The only use case I could see for this is if the keyboard had control/alt/esc keys - in that case shelling into a machine on my phone might become slightly more efficient than an onscreen keyboard.

Could use arrow keys and a headphone jack

Like, I understand why no iPhone 13 Mini support… but please? I can’t imagine too much extra work goes into chopping the top half of the case off and just having different sizes. Almost like it’s the Wii mote + case with the attachment at the bottom and everything is just in the sleeve.

First thought is weight distribution & stability; thumbs and fingers at the bottom 2-3" of a 9" long top-heavy 300g+ weight seems problematic. They talk about how to hold it in this video [1] but don't address the typing experience.

My guess is you have to grip a bit harder than you normally would to keep it stable, and this may impact the typing speed (vis-a-vis old school BB). Cameras make iPhones pretty top-heavy.

I don't see the weight of this Clicks case, I'd guess it's at least the same density as the iPhone (~32g/in height) so minimum of +70g, and possibly more like +100-120g.

Nevertheless I love the chutzpah of this device.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HuCsLY5fQg

I prototyped something very similar during covid using a 3d printer, a blackberry keyboard, and a teensy. I don't think this is going to generate many long term users, even though I was enthusiastic enough to hack on it for a bit.

* So much of my typing includes selecting emoji, using odd symbols, and the need for inputs not provided on this. In addition, having to switch between the touch screen and keyboard as inputs was very annoying.

* It significantly decreases the experience of using the phone in touch situations.

* I was using it with my iPhone mini and the phone and case had terrible weight balance. My hands fatigued quickly. I can't imagine how bad it would be for a iPhone Max.

* I lost the use of my port.

Steve Jobs must be rolling in his grave lol. iPhones have been getting bigger and you still want more screen space? Why not just get a iPad with an external keyboard at this point if you're such a "content creator"?

I once tried a typing speed test on my iPhone and compared it to my physical keyboard I always type with on the PC. I think on the on screen keyboard (OSK) I was reaching over 60% of the speed of the full sized keyboard on the PC.

This was really surprising for me, as also the precision was not really worse than on the PC.

I have to admit that I can't type perfectly with 10 fingers, but reach around 350-500 keystrokes per minute, which is far beyond average.

So the OSK is fine for me, as long as the UI is handling the missing screen space well, and doesn't provide a bad UX, like jumping scroll positions or covering important buttons by the OSK.

Bright yellow and marketed via emotion “make your statement”.

These are going to end up in a drawer by end of the week.

There is a reason the mixed screen and physical keyboard phones lost. Screens can be keyboards but keyboards can’t be screen.

Fun idea. But the problem with these things is that you need to keep rebuying new ones.

Also, most of the problems with onscreen problems for me were mitigated by swype -style typing at which I'm faster than a physical phone keyboard now. Though not faster than a real PC keyboard which I still highly prefer when I'm at home or at the office. So I use my phone mainly for when I'm out of the house, at home I still have a PC that's on 24/7. As such I'm not really happy with the mobile-first attitude of most services but what can I do :)

Perhaps a bit expensive?

If the answer is going to be: we’re a low volume startup and this is as cheap we can make it. And it has to be a premium product so can take a sustainable margin…

…what’s stopping a cheap Asian knockoff manufacturer - if the product achieves any sort of success/notoriety - from selling much, much cheaper clones?

PS: I own a medium-size iPhone case that is a complete, fully functioning, handheld game console with its own screen, keys and speaker. It cost me 12€ on Amazon.

I'd prefer a keyboard that covers part of the screen (and interoperates with the OS to mark that part of the screen unused), and operates over Bluetooth or the USB-C connector in the bottom.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to trade thickness instead of height for a physical keyboard? A horizontal layout attached on the back of the device that you can slide.

I still miss my N900 keyboard…

But the question everyone is asking is: Do they have a Dvorak version

Remarkably similar to this failed 2019 Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/physibo/physibo

And the Typo2 for iPhone 6 in 2014-5: https://www.amazon.com/Typo2-Keyboard-for-iPhone-6/dp/B00O49...

Mixed feelings. I was a heavy BlackBerry user (and a PM for it at a local telco) for years, and then when I got an iPhone 3G I found I could type _faster_ on it, to the point where a visiting Apple rep commented on how quick I was at it (way before current autocorrect).

I have a feeling that Apple dropped the ball with the more modern keyboard implementations, but I can still type (and swipe) with good enough speed and accuracy to not really miss a physical keyboard.

I first looked at the keyboard case and thought that it was an insult to design of smartphones. Then after about 30 seconds of watching my husband walk across the kitchen, I realized I’m not the target audience. He is. He mourned the passing of the physical home button and enjoys the tactile response of keys under his fingers. There is definitely a market for this product. I just went from “absolutely not” to “add to cart”. Way to go!

I'm legitimately surprised that whoever owns the blackberry IP didn't do something like this way sooner.

edit: lol, nevermind https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38875842

> Ryan Seacrest (yes the Ryan Seacrest) bankrolled a startup 10 years ago with an almost identical product. (They were sued out of existence by an already dying BlackBerry.)

The proportions compared to a classic blackberry seem terrible for typing ergonomics. With a Blackberry, the overall device is closer to a square and the keyboard is basically the bottom half of the device. With the case, the keyboard is like the bottom 20% and it seems like the weight of the rest of the phone would be constantly trying to leverage it out of your grasp, especially since blackberries were like half as heavy as a modern smartphone.

I love this! capacitive keyboards on a piece of technology will literally never get old. https://www.mpofcinci.com/blog/advantages-of-capacitive-touc...

Only issue is I might need to store my new iPhone pro max in the water bottle compartment of my backpack with this case

Back in 2010 I had an iPhone 3GS and a Blackberry Bold. I really wanted to justify using the Bold because of the professional image I associated with it. In repeated typing speed tests, I found my WPM to be essentially the same between the two. Every other aspect of the iPhone user experience was vastly better. I kept the iPhone and never looked back to phones with keyboards.

I wrote a little bit about why I still long for physical keyboards on phones here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37713211

My personal workaround is to have a Bluetooth keyboard + iPad or Lenovo X1C laptop with me at most times (in a backpack), which isn't ideal. But neither is this "Clicks" product :)

I'm a fan of hardware keyboards, I enjoyed my HTC Dream (T-mobile G1), for me smartphones and tactile keys are a good match.

That being said, this product doesn't look good - it seems uncomfortable to hold. The keys are low, the device gets comically tall and I suppose significantly unbalanced or top heavy.

Related to that, I'm missing a video showing a longer typing session, or an unaffiliated review.

I would understand pros of the physical keyboard if there was no slide to type feature. But it's there for some time already and I don't see how having a physical keyboard is going to be beneficial.

The issue with typing on touchscreens is not only about keyboard but also about the whole UX around it. All these short/long taps, struggling to make selections etc.

I see this product as a gimmick.

i need this for a 12 mini

extending the already small phone would basically bring it in line with larger phones in its class, but with a keyboard

Apple have kinda opened a niche for such products through recent “improvements” to autocorrect which make it highly unreliable.

I feel like this would be a lot more popular amongst devs if it had extra keys which are often used for things like coding and SSH.

I would buy this if it had a sliding keyboard. I'd better wait for cheaper versions that will likely imitate this feature.

I very quickly went from “that’s dumb” to “how do I order this?”, I have despised touch screen keyboards since they became a thing. I’m typing on one now, and I wish I wasn’t.

However I’m still on an iPhone 12 which is not supported. Hopefully when I upgrade they’ll have a superior version available. The ergonomics look goofy but I’m sure you adapt over time.

This keyboard will dramatically improve my mobile productivity as it will allow me to use vim properly!

Mechanical engineer here. The moment of the of the phone is going to shift it’s gonna be very uncomfortable to hold.

I like the idea of a little keyboard that I can attach. But this is a replacement case so it is meant to be on all the time?

Some interesting layout choices. mostly ortholinear but not totally, double size enter key, same size backspace, tab, language globe.

Neato idea, glad to see interesting accessories coming out. This is a hard sell for me.

I really want a programmer-friendly physical keyboard for Android phones, which is suitable to holding (not needing resting on a table).

I've got a Pixel 3 right now, but I'd be willing to change phones if one worked very well with a physical keyboard.

Or maybe I just have to buy one of those GPD Win 4 devices, or the Ayaneo Slide...

To make mobile computing really ergonomic the better direction is getting rid of the screen altogether, replacing it with AR goggles. Then whatever physical device remains as a companion can be fully dedicated to input. This is a future I’d love to see, since it would really allow me to work from anywhere.

I bet it's big enough that it could also contain an SD card reader, which could be really useful

As someone who grew up with the Blackjack and Sidekick phones I like this. I'll nitpick on a marketed scenario though:

> Launch Spotlight

> cmd + space

Cool that there's a keyboard but this is more easily done by just dragging the home screen down. There are probably more powerful hotkey combos they can pick for the marketing here.

What would personally sell me on a keyboard for my iPhone: getting the missing keys (home, end, arrow keys)

Looks nice but doesn’t fit in pocket.

A less elegant but practical option for note taking in class or writing docs is a portable folding keyboard for iPhones, like this iClever Bluetooth Keyboard

https://a.co/d/cibFqle

Wish they give it for android. Because there will be more phones which are small as well. It will be great thing which I wished for a long time since htc made one. Blackberry is gone. And one company that makes qwerty keyboard phone is way expensive from UK to order

Ooft, that turns my 15 pro into a tall, tall boy.

I love the idea of it but I don’t think it’s practical for me.

Neat! I like it enough to almost buy it. I use an android as my daily driver, so it's not a real productivity booster for me, but I would like to get my hands on it to see how it feels. I was a big fan of the Blackberry Key2 android phones (still use mine for dev work!), which included the full keyboard, so if this is anywhere close to that, it's probably pretty cool.

Really the only thing stopping me is that this doesn't also include a touch sensitive volume rocker that would scroll the screen for me. That would really reiterate that focus on 'not touching the screen'. I know that's not something anyone has every developed before, nor is it something anyone promised. But it is both super feasible, and seems like a really killer feature, so if I'm buying a luxury item, I'd like it to have every feature I'm looking for instead of just most of them. Again, if an iPhone were my daily driver, that calculus would be different.

Seems like an attempt to recreate Blackberry experience. While it looks interesting, the use case is not as appealing, and it is really expensive! For context, Apple Magic Keyboard for PCs cost less than this, which in itself is a much pricier product.

Are we going back in time or something? Recently innovation has gotten to be without any creativity near redundant.where are the see- through phones and flying cars.

This again reminded me what a struggle it is to use the iOS keypad on my iPhone 14. I don’t what they got wrong. My fingers aren’t big either. I never face this on android phones of similar size or even smaller (back in the day).

I would love to see a return of physical keyboards on phones.

But I do feel that it might just be a niche.

Since I think most people have already gotten used to all display phones, there were even some phones in the past that tries removing the volume buttons and such.

It's a half a subway submarine sandwich length. This will succeed in America:)

Does anyone remember Ericsson A1018 external keyboard attachments? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNdreBTNybM

Fuck ‘content creation’ on mobile phones. I like mobile phones for two reasons, 1. because it is a phone and 2. because I can use it for authentication stuff. The rest is all focused on consuming and giving away your data.

I usually attach a 60% keyboard to my phone every time i have to write longer things. I carry it with me everywhere.

I despise having to write on a small touch keyboard, but I am pretty sure this would not solve any of my issues

Anyone else hoping this would be landscape?

I feel like this is going to be ridiculously top heavy.

Love the idea, but its a missed opportunity - some wheels and it could have been a skateboard too.

With all seriousness, keyboard should have flipped or slid out so its more compact. I can't see that in peoples pockets.

Reminds me of "Long GameBoy for No Reason" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zPehVx_J0M

Doesn't BlackBerry have a patent for this?

Ryan Seacrest had started a iPhone physical keyboard company, Typo I think, and got sued so bad he abandoned the whole thing. How will these people get around it?

Looks a little top heavy to me. Like it would be a struggle keeping my Pro Max from falling backwards out of my hand.

But I suppose I wouldn’t really need a Pro Max size after using a keyboard like this.

I wonder what the effect of the key rows not being offset is on the UX.

Please do one for a Pixel but with ctrl, meta, alt, maybe esc keys.

Absolutely love the idea, reminds me of my hp ipaq, but will wait for clones. I wouldnt pay 160 USD for this, more like 60. Guaranteed amazon will be full of clones in a year.

This is pretty cool! I wonder if you could make one with an adjustable mounting system for the long tail of weirdos like me with a new iPhone SE and other models.

iOs now has a way of moving the cursor by holding down spacebar and then dragging your finger. This also lets selections be extended.

How will this keyboard replace that for cursor movement?

Can I get one for an iPad Pro? :)

Or a full size flip-phone version, for my friends who think those were the golden years? With all the emoji keys?

(Yes, these would be prank gifts. But such great ones!)

I wonder if there is room for a battery behind the keyboard?

Xperia Mini Pro had the best built in/slide keyboard.

Needs function keys to be useful for my use case... but I love it! Also... love that the connection is not Bluetooth and is lightning or usb-c. Nice!

I wish there was a phone flip case with a keyboard. I have seen tablet keyboards like this, but they are too big to use with a smartphone.

I loved my blackberry and I’m interested.

I’d be more likely to order it if the keyboard was mounted in a case that could be changed when upgrading iPhone.

It somehow reminded me of the Ericsson Chatboard.

140 USD for a gimmick case? waaay overpriced

There will come a day (with the advent of AI speech recognition) where keyboards will be obsolete.

That day is sooner than we think.

Long long phone

https://youtu.be/6-1Ue0FFrHY

Ah I see someone is capitalizing on the whole iPhone 15 pro max touchscreen not responsive issue. Kudos to click

I don't understand why they chose that insanely long form factor. What's wrong with landscape mode?

Apple is jealous now for not launching this product themselves. Best if author can get patent for it .)

I love (/s) how heavily the marketing is aimed at being a trendsetter and using it as yet another status symbol. This plays out to me louder than functionality of its actual purpose. Spending time on Founder's Edition and badges just screams with a megaphone at me in stomach churning ways.

Clearly, I'm not the audience for the branding, but a smart device I would be interested in if marketed for adults.

The fake podcast promo video is.. Weird.

Palm Pre was where smartphone design peaked, and this keyboard design is making me nostalgic for that.

I wish this existed for my 13 mini!

This would make the iPhone 13 mini pro a perfect device, too bad they didn’t support they model.

Somebody bring back the OG Motorola Droid slide keyboard and I will switch to Android.

I wonder what the viability of a tactile T9 keyboard on the back of the phone is.

Disappointing (but understandable) that this is not available for my 14 Pro Max.

Would this be faster than swiping? Because I basically only type with swiping.

Don't listen to the people on hacker news as they are a very specific niche of iphone users. Your users are those fat chicks with bitch on board bumper stickers who buy bubble tea because they think it's healthy.

What I'm trying to say is it looks great and just iterate!

Does it come with the Blackberry breakout game and a scroll wheel?

I hate the iPhone virtual keyboard. It sucks. I would try this.

They should consider replacing Thunderbolt with USB-C :)

Why not have the keyboard part of the case and fold down

Does anyone own this and can comment on the experience?

Now I can enjoy Palm Pixi on my iPhone, loved it.

What does "creator keyboard" means?

What on earth is a "creator keyboard"?

keyboards were awesome, i hate typing on screens

but that just makes the phone even bigger.. they're already huge

feels like this is ... 15 years late.

Could have gone with bigger keys :)

Looks like a bloated hardware.

Want my Google G1 back :-)

this site has no valid ssl cert, browser does not allow to visit :-)

Cool. Not $160 cool.

as a Palm fan and iPhone user, I am so very interested in it.

Nice horizontal scroll.

Time is a flat circle.

I still miss a good T9

seems like it could make the pro max quite top heavy

Sucks if you speak more than one language, like most people do.

does it support swipe because i need that

No trackpad?

This is such a beautifully designed website.

Steve Jobs probably rolling in his grave seeing this lol

Look Grandpa, new Blackberry.

this looks sliiick!

I wonder how they compensate COG movement. I guess iPhone will be heavier while typing.

very nostalgic

My favourite phone was my Blackberry Passport. So good.

Bring. Back. Keyboards.

blackberry anyone?

Lol NO!

Blackberry 8700 is the gold standard for a phone with a keyboard. It is the most productive cellphone I have ever owned.

Phone calls, text message and email is what it did well. And it did exceedingly well.

The thumbwheel was just the right spot to quickly scan an email.

The keyboard is as good as they get.

The operating system was built to do exactly this and not that much more.

It is really hard to convey how great it was, without being able to offer up demos. I have bought keyboard add ons for iPhone and Android as they have become available and usually died quickly.

I even tried to get a company going to create a "blackberry look alike" on Android but in the end I didnt get financing and making Android be classic BB is not easy.

It was not good for games, web browsing, apps in general, but that didn't matter because it did what I needed it to do

BB from then on was a sinking ship, b/c they figured they would add all the features from the iPhone and Android to it. And eventually released an Android phone.

They lost focus on what the existing customers really loved.

I solved this issue by getting a 13" macbook air as my second computer. It is small and lightweight enough to be comfortable to use as a personal browsing and communication device in the situations where you'd probably be using your phone and trying to type too much on it like long group chats with friends. it is the ultimate portable typing machine for me when I don't want to be bound to a desk.

Women’s hands in every image yet a man’s face everywhere. Just a little on the nose.

Obviously I am not the target demographic but I am interested to see where this goes.

Why does the design of this website have a "Saved by the Bell" vibe? (US TV show from 1990s.) And the dude with tats and salt-and-pepper beard just below "Make your statement" is super cringe.