This past Halloween, I was at a party where a middle-aged man dressed as an Oppenheimer Ken doll (“I’m Atomic Bomb Ken!” he kept proclaiming) was holding court about the days of yore–a.k.a. the 2000s. Eventually, he ranted about modern mobile phones, how touchscreen keyboards suck, and how the BlackBerry and its hardware keyboard was an awesome phone.
I never got the real name of Atomic Bomb Ken, nor do I know how to contact him. If I could, I would tell him about the Clicks Creator Keyboard, a $139 iPhone case that has a hardware keyboard at the bottom and makes the iPhone look BlackBerry-ish. Compatible with the iPhone 14 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro, the case has a Lightning or USB-C connector that attaches to the iPhone. You can then use the keyboard for typing, and since no touchscreen keyboard appears, you can get a full view of what’s on the iPhone display.
The keyboard has the familiar QWERTY layout, along with a dedicated microphone key for voice input. Users can even use the Command key for keyboard shortcut combos, such as Command+H to go to the Home screen, or Command+Spacebar for Spotlight. The company was co-founded by Michael Fisher, a tech reviewer known as Mr. Mobile on YouTube.
Obviously, the Creator Keyboard adds a considerable amount of length to the iPhone–it extends 7.41 inches (188.3 millimeters), which is an additional 1.64 inches (41.1 mm). But hey, that’s the price you pay for satisfying a nostalgic urge. Clicks Technology offers the case in BumbleBee (yellow) or London Sky, which looks like Space Gray and seems like a depressing allusion to mates in the U.K.
Along with the iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 Pro models that are shipping February 1 and mid-March, respectively, Clicks is accepting $30 deposits toward the $159 iPhone 15 Pro Max model that will be available this spring. It’s a whopping 8 inches (204.1 mm) long, so hopefully your low-rise jeans from the 2000s have deep pockets.
