A company called Unihertz just launched a Kickstarter campaign for an Android phone that looks and feels like the old BlackBerry phones everyone used to love. The Titan 2 Elite has that classic physical keyboard that made BlackBerry famous, but runs modern Android apps.
This is interesting because most people thought physical keyboards on phones were dead forever. Apple killed them with the iPhone, and Samsung followed. But some people never stopped missing the satisfying click of real keys and the speed of typing without looking at the screen.
The BlackBerry That Actually Works
Unihertz showed off the Titan 2 Elite at a major tech conference earlier this year, but kept the price secret until now. The phone starts at $489 on Kickstarter, with early backers getting a discount. That’s pretty reasonable for a niche phone with specialized features.
The company has made similar phones before, but this one is more compact and polished. It runs full Android, meaning you get all the apps you’re used to, plus that physical keyboard for people who type a lot of emails or messages on their phone.
The campaign just launched, so the phones won’t ship for months. But it shows there’s still demand for something different in a world where every phone looks basically the same. Whether enough people actually buy one remains to be seen.
