Revival of Blackberry nostalgia and keyboard fuels smartphone startups

When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, physical keyboards quickly lost ground to touchscreens and faded from mainstream smartphones.

Now, a new wave of startups, including U.K.-based Clicks Technology and Chinese firm Unihertz, is bringing them back and carving out a niche for phones with tactile buttons.

The shift away from buttons once seemed final. Blackberry, long known for its keyboard phones, stopped producing hardware in 2016 and shuttered its software services in 2022.

But fans of its squarish phones with its signature keyboard remain loyal to the brand. The r/Blackberry subreddit has 25,000 members who share tips and nostalgia for the devices.

The renewed interest reflects a broader pattern, said Jung Younbo, a communications professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

“We tend to use our smartphones as a kind of means to express ourselves,” said Younbo. As phones become more embedded in daily life, trends around them increasingly resemble cyclical fashion trends, he added.

For some users, the appeal is less about nostalgia and more about control. Clicks Technology’s co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer, Jeff Gadway, said about 45% of their customer base has never used a phone with a physical keyboard.

“They look at this not as a nostalgia play, but as an entirely new way to use their phone that’s more intentional,” he told CNBC.

That sense of intention is part of the draw for 23-year-old content creator Chonnie Alfonso, who typically features retro gadgets on her YouTube channel.

She said switching to a keyboard device introduced friction, prompting her to rethink how often she used her phone.

Having “an extra barrier of inconvenience that adds more steps into the thinking process” as opposed to “an accessible slab of glass in your hand” has become a way for her to reduce the time she spends on her phone, Alfonso told CNBC.

Doomscrolling is less suited to square-shaped, BlackBerry-style smartphones. Alfonso said switching to a keyboard device has helped her spend less time on social media and take better control of her schedule.

Clicks Technology’s Gadway said the company’s device emphasizes messaging and core functions, aiming to keep users focused on their original tasks instead of drifting into other apps.

The phone, featuring messaging apps on a home launcher, is designed to ensure users do what they originally set out to do, rather than ending up on a “side quest,” he said.

“It’s about making the time you spend on your phone more valuable to you.”