Parker Ortolani

I woke up this morning to two very exciting announcements. One from Pebble and one from Clicks, both brands that I absolutely adore.

One of my favorite gadgets back in the day was the Pebble Time Round, it was a stunning, ultra thin, extremely fun smart watch that didn’t feel like a smart watch. I pestered Eric, the founder of Pebble, on X to make a new version of the Round after he unveiled the revamped standard Pebbles. Sure enough, he’d been working on it and my tweet made it into the launch video. The new Pebble Round looks like the ideal smart watch. The idea almost perfectly distilled down to the essentials. The new version has a much larger display, eschewing the ginormous bezels of the original. It has a touch screen for smoother input, two weeks of battery life instead of two days, and so much more. I of course had to order one, both for the nostalgia but also because I’ve been kicking myself for not preordering the first new Pebble to be part of this journey. Combined with the new Pebble ring, the Index, I think this is going to make for an awfully fun (and productive) new wearable combo. I love everything that Pebble stands for and I’m glad they’re now carving out a niche that allows them to not just survive but thrive in this modern environment.

The other announcement this morning, is really two. Clicks makes the delightful keyboard cases for iPhone and Android. I had the original and have purchased subsequent models, but Clicks has finally made the product that I truly wanted. The power keyboard is so much more than I had even hoped. It’s a MagSafe bluetooth keyboard that has a Palm Pre-like slider mechanism so you can tuck the keyboard behind the phone. But it’s also a battery pack, making it exponentially more useful. Because it’s bluetooth, it’ll also make an excellent companion to my Vision Pro and Apple TV to boot. I immediately preordered one. If the power keyboard caught your attention though, the communicator will blow your mind. It’s rare that an accessory company can parlay their success into proper gadget hardware but leave it to the Clicks team to be the ones to pull it off. The Clicks Communicator is a brand new Android phone with a built-in keyboard. It’s got a custom launcher tailored to notifications rather than apps (so glad this idea is back), expandable storage, a headphone jack, a proper notification LED, a fingerprint sensor in the space bar, and get this, like late Blackberry models the keyboard doubles as a trackpad. My favorite part is that the communicator has swappable back covers, a lot like the Palm Pixi did before its demise. Clicks is positioning this as a secondary phone, like a Kindle to an iPad, but I suspect this will be a hot primary device for a lot of nerds. It’s essentially what a modern Blackberry would be if it were built today. Heck, it was designed in large part by one of Blackberry’s most important designers back in the day. Communicator just scratches that little gadget itch that us nerds get and I cannot wait to try one.