QWERTY Telephones Are Actually Attempting to Make a Comeback This 12 months

After dying a painful demise on the hand of the iPhone’s revolutionary capacitive touchscreen, the QWERTY smartphone is rising up from the graveyard this yr.

No, BlackBerry isn’t returning regardless of enthusiast efforts to retrofit old BlackBerry Classics with modern-day elements like a sooner CPU, extra RAM and storage, an even bigger battery, and a USB-C port. Whether or not it’s nostalgia for a bodily keyboard, frustration at iOS’s ever-worsening software keyboard, or simply plain boredom with glass slabs, firms are rebooting QWERTY telephones this yr for some cause.

At CES 2026, Clicks, the corporate behind the Clicks keyboard case and the new Power Keyboard, introduced plans to promote the Communicator, a “second cellphone” with a QWERTY keypad. Clicks pitches the $500 cellphone, launching later this yr, as a tool primarily supposed for messaging—sending texts, DMs, Slack messages, no matter. The corporate didn’t have a practical unit—solely a mockup dummy to fondle on the present—nevertheless it seemed cool sufficient, even when it’ll be a really area of interest product. It’s a cool concept, however how many individuals will carry a companion cellphone to their most important cellphone simply to shoot off a number of DMs? $500 is so much to ask for that satisfaction.

However Clicks isn’t the one one making an attempt to deliver again QWERTY telephones. Unihertz, makers of the actually tiny Jelly Android telephones and likewise Tank phones with massive battery capacities, additionally teased a brand new cellphone with a bodily keyboard. The Titan 2 Elite appears to be a much less gimmicky model of the Titan 2, which itself was a BlackBerry Passport knockoff however with a weird sq. display screen on the bottom.

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— Unihertz (@Unihertz) January 12, 2026

Look intently, and there are some bizarre similarities between the Clicks Communicator and the Titan 2 Elite. We don’t have dimension specs but, however the screens appear to have the identical rounded corners, and even the hole-punch digital camera is in the identical upper-left nook. The one distinction appears to be the keyboards; the Communicator makes use of particular person keys, whereas the Titan 2 Elite’s keyboard is extra BlackBerry-esque.

Both approach, two QWERTY cellphone bulletins on this nonetheless very new yr counsel there could also be some type of development. Possibly after 19 years of the iPhone and touchscreens defining the cell expertise, it’s time to return to the bodily keyboard and its extra tactile typing. Or perhaps there’s only a keyboard provider on the market firing up its factories and making an attempt to pump out barely completely different—however largely similar—telephones to anyone prepared to pay them. I suppose we nonetheless have 352 days left to seek out out if extra cellphone makers have the center to revive the spirit of the BlackBerry.