BlackBerry Will Never Die! - DTNS Weekend

0:00So, before we get started, you guys know that I am a blackberry fiend and I'm still very upset that research in motion, that's what I'm going to call the company they didn't handle things right. That's old school. That's old school proper. I will never call them Blackberry. They're rim as far as I'm concerned. But this guy had a little website called Crackberry.com. And 15 years ago, we were competing with each other to see who could get the article first to get it out. We had some fun. Yeah, we had some fun. It was a different era. That was the golden age of tech journalism, I think. It really was.

0:31And we did a lot of stuff that, I don't know, I'm surprised that it ended up in jail. I got a lot of cease and desist. I got that much. Celebrity Blackberry Sightings got shut down very, very quickly when I got some really, really official-looking certified mail. I like that site, and then I started doing them after you shut it down, and then we got some letters, too. But we're still here. We're good. But it looks like Clix, you guys are giving me my tactile feel back. This is... 2026 is the year. You're going to have something that gets you excited again like 10, 15 years ago. And, yeah, I mean, this is my dream built true.

1:11Because we got sick of sort of waiting around, hoping that we would get something that got that energy and excitement. And, you know, for me, this is our third year at this event. When we started the first year, it was Clicks for iPhone. Last year, we showed off Clicks for Android. Had a lot of fun with that. Obviously, the Razorberry, pretty cool. This is the most fun you can have with a keyboard right now, where you put a keyboard on a Mono Razer. You have the most badass big Android phone going to a really clock-able thing that kind of gives off some vibes. And what we saw is once we held this in our hand, we love it.

1:53And probably 90 % of the time, you end up not opening the phone to the screen. So having this really made us validate that it was the time to do this. But the company, when we built it, to me, this was always the goal, right? But it would be kind of crazy to come out right at the start with a brand new company, brand new brand, without validating it, having distribution, revenue, your team, all your supply chain and everything well sorted and vetted. So we started with Clix for iPhone. I think maybe a lot of people thought, hey, you're an accessory company, and now building a product like a phone is a bit of a leak.

2:28Like, are you sure you guys can do it? but the reality is we built a team from day one that does phones. Everybody on the team has shipped built phones over 20 years shipped hundreds of thousands, millions of products that team that's bringing this to market we live for this but we started with the clicks for iPhone, clicks for Android to validate the demand was there cutter chops, build grants, supply train, everything and also watch the timing on the market because we couldn't build a device like this day one, three years ago, right? You have to, when you're building a product, like you need to watch supply chain, watch what's available off the shelf, but what's going to be coming available next?

3:07And we couldn't have built this with that glass like that. So we waited and we built and we built and we built. And then when everything came together, we're like, oh, let's do it. And what's a fun fact for BlackBerry, what are some of your favorite models of the past? Pretty much the Bold series. So those were my devices. That is the correct answer. and the Bold 9000 and Bold 9900, the Q10, the refinement and manufacturing integration, the Passport, Joseph Hofer, he's the Blackberry industrial designer who did that. Literally the iconic kind of Blackberry ring, that shape that you love. He did it.

3:46So when we decided to do this, it kind of became the way to hook us, honor the past, but build something new and modern for the future was to get the guy who did your favorite phones and my favorite phones from that era, this. so he's the he's the hands that crafted with the input from people with very strong opinions like myself mr mobile jeff gadway who was the guy on stage announcing half those blackberries to the world so we built our we built our dream team to build this and the attention to detail in here there's so much fan service and so much nostalgia that when you get it in your hands you're literally going to get emotional like it feels that good and we did we didn't try to build like the tiniest phone the biggest phone we built the optimal phone so if you if you care about communication that you know that two-thumb experience that that in-hand experience even holding it like this i don't know if you'll have felt a phone this good in 15 years but i would argue probably ever it's not good like you're gonna have a it's here come down when you get it and everybody who's held it and playing with it is just like perfect and that that is because we built the team and we are the fans.

4:53We are you. We are the same. I am the customer. I am the fan. This team has that involved, but we built all the relationships over 20 years to know exactly who to work with to do this when the timing is right. And the last few years have been a very calculated, pragmatic, step-by-step way to do it so we can do it in a way that's, you're going to love. So right now, you've got it behind glass, but when is someone like me going to actually be able to touch one of these? Rob, it's you. I mean, you just have to say remarkable. Like, what time are we done here? Come to my suite at Cosmo. You'll get it.

5:30I'll give you the pride of breathing. This is a show everybody's too crazy here. We've got to keep it under glass. Make it that object. It really is an object of desire. Like, I keep catching you. Like, you see him? He's just, like, staring down. He's like, I can't take my eyes off of it. So, Kevin, I still have on my shelf behind me brand new in-the-box Black-Brate Bowls. sitting up on my shelf. 9 ,000? I have to pull the batteries out because I just don't want the batteries to go. But yeah, you know, I have, probably like you, I literally have totes full of BlackBerry devices from over the years.

6:03I've given away so many. I actually bought, we had a, I was in Waterloo, you know, birthplace of BlackBerry before the holidays and we had a meet up there with a bunch of ex-BlackBerry fans or employees, I should say, and fans and one guy came with like all the BlackBerrys and I was actually buying old ones that were missing from my collection, which was kind of fun. I thought I was just going to have a good time, and I went home missing a bunch of money, but I filled out some gaps I had. But same thing, I have so many of them. So when do you expect to release? So I'm allowed to say later this year.

6:35I would like, I could give you all the things I want to say, but later this year is the official line, so back half of the year. Going full speed ahead. You know, everything is in progress, right? So like, this is not a concept device. This is running through all the supply chain, hardware validation, components are selected, everybody's working on their parts. Software on the operating system side, it's Android 16, but we're working on Niagara Launcher, which is one of the more popular Android launchers, which I love. And one of the things I love about it is Android people love it, but when I show it to iPhone people, they don't think it's Android, right?

7:15I think a lot of people who go iPhone, once they hear the word Android, they just think it's not for them at all, and they just say iPhone people. And I think one of the neat things about Communicator, and even one of the reasons we called Communicator, was you don't have to put the word phone or smartphone at the end. It sort of becomes its own new category that creates a lot of curiosity. Like, what is a Communicator? And when you see a home screen that doesn't look sort of as Android-ish by default, it makes it much more accessible. And it gives you that ability to have more of a messaging-centric experience.

7:47So, you know, if you're going to have, you can obviously use this as a primary, and all of the BlackBerry faithful who have been waiting for a device like this, they're going to want to, you know, put their primary in it, use it, more than capable smartphone for that. But we're also not daft to think, like, oh, if you've been on an iPhone 10 years, or you're a Pixel person, or you buy every Galaxy, a new one every year or two years, then you're just going to, like, switch to a Pixel's first communicator. a lot of people now are using two phones, right? Right. And the analogy I like to use is, the world of tablets.

8:19You know, like I have an iPad, it's my everything tablet, but I also have a Kindle. You know, why did Amazon build a Kindle? Isn't that crazy to build a Kindle if Apple's got a tablet? Right. Well, no, because if you care about reading, the hardware's optimized for reading, software's optimized for reading, you don't go to a home screen that's a bunch of icons to get back to the last page of your book. You open the Kindle, on the last page of your book. It's a purpose-built tool for reading. And our approach with this is to make it a purpose-built tool for communication. And that's where we've really selected an experience that I think does that and makes it that companion in the sense of the word, you're going to probably have it with you a lot.

8:58But maybe a better word is even complimentary because it's complimentary to your flagship phone that you probably own that has the big camera and it's built for consumption and media creation. Whereas this is about staying in touch with your people and the important stuff. And one of the things we've been hearing a lot is, you know, when people are thinking, how am I going to use it in my life? We're not telling you how to use it, right? Some people, their day job, they need their iPhone because they're social media and content. This might be their evening weekend phone. Other people, their day job, messaging.

9:29This is their work phone. And, you know, maybe their big touchscreen becomes their weekend up on the couch scrolling Instagram. Whatever you want to do with it is fine. And our approach was, let's build a tool optimized for communication, messaging, not limit what you can do with it. That'll be up to you. But the natural hardware and software optimizations, you're not going to probably want to take scroll all day on it, right? So let me ask you a couple questions. So stuff that you do have, clicks for Moto. Are you going to be coming out with clicks for maybe the flip? so what's funny is at the end of the table we announced two products this week for you know our 2026 unveil communicators may be my favorite child you're not supposed to have favorite children but how could it not be so we also announced power keyboard or power keys that's our universal version of a it's like a keyboard but it's actually bluetooth that it's using it attaches via magsafe and you can pair it with basically any smartphone pair with a tablet pair with a smart tv you can use it with something like an Apple Vision Pro headset, which is awesome, and fixes trying to type like this.

10:40We've been giving briefings this week. What's the first thing somebody does? Oh, I'm going to come throw a Samsung flip on it. It works. So we already have that capability in the versatile power keys. You know, the external display on Moto Razr is really nice to use. Samsung's flips are not quite as good out of the box with what you're allowed to do on the external display. So we get asked a lot about it and kind of want to do it, but I also think that external display experience with the keyboard is just not as good right now as what Brinkler offers. So I think that's an option, but I also think now that communicator's here, it's hard to say what people are going to want to do.

11:23So our goal is to support as many products as we can. We want to give people options. We're all about choice. But at the same time, when we built the keyboard case, we have to make it perfect for that model. And in the case of iPhone, we started with the iPhone 14 Pro, Pro Max, 15, 15 Plus, 15 Pro, Pro Max, 16, 16 Plus, 16 Pro, 16 Pro Max, 70 Pro, 70 Pro Max, throwing some Android phones, throwing a few colors, you've got 60 products that you're shipping around the world and everything else. So to keep expanding that, you know, too crazy, becomes a logistically complicated business. We're going to keep supporting the flagships we do, and we may add some others if the demand is there.

12:07But obviously we have to build new molds for them. And if we can get phones well in advance, manufacturers, if you're listening, just give us them, you know, Apple, give it to us a year sooner, six months sooner. We can be there for launch. But, you know, when you do a dumb case, the tolerances don't have to be perfect, right? So most manufacturers are going to build stuff off of in-advanced CAD files and cut their metal, cut their dyes, go into production so they can be there right away. With us, we want to make sure we can get the real, for example, iPhone into it, confirm everything before we put it out to market, and make sure it works because the tolerance is tight and it has to happen there.

12:48So we lose a few months, and then if a new phone comes out a year later, your sales cycle on it is kind of not as long, right? when people are going into upgrade cycles and that kind of thing. So this is a great product, and I love my daily driver is a Pro Max from the Clicks, and I love it. We'll keep doing that, but I think in the case of what we support, we just have to be really careful with it. It's not something we do just haphazardly. And we do have some ideas, though, to... This is when they're supposed to shock me and say, quit talking, Kevin, you're giving away the secrets. let's just say we do have some ideas that will still address other products that maybe you know, we have a fun way to get even further with that support.

13:35Okay, well Kevin, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Delete it all. Delete it all. Don't put any of this. So just for the record, everything I say is not great Kevin's opinion, not the opinion of Clix. What other disclaimers do I have? Just being funny, you know. Really appreciate the support. Go to clickphone.com to reserve your communicator. Would love it if you do because it's going to take... This gets the community back in a way that I don't think it's been in a long, long time that I love. And I'm telling you, it's emotional. You're going to feel it later tonight. You're going to love it.

14:06So thank you so much.