The Clicks is a $139 iPhone case for people who hate typing on a touchscreen

I used to be a speed demon on phone keyboards. Like when I use a mechanical keyboard, I can type so easily that during the early days of texting, people at my house would ask me to type their longer messages. Those days of carefree typing on a cell phone made me horny when I got my first iPhone.

Now, I can't get started without first looking at the touch keyboard. I always make at least one typo when writing long texts, emails or documents. That's why I'm fascinated by the recent attempt to bring old-school physical keyboards to iPhones.

Additional keyboard for iPhone

Clicks Technology on Thursday unveiled Clicks, a keyboard available for the iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max that clips onto the phone like a case. But instead of adding security, it adds a physical keyboard. Each key features 0.22 millimeters of travel, Jeff Gadway, senior vice president of product marketing at Clicks, told Ars via email. That sounds like miles compared to the flat nature of touchscreens.

The keyboard connects via the iPhone's Lightning or USB-C port (whichever one the iPhone has). It uses iOS support for external keyboards, taking advantage of the Human Interface Device (HID) protocol. According to clicks Instructions pageThe company decided to ditch Bluetooth to avoid pairing complications and latency. Users should still be able to charge their phones, including wireless chargers, with connected taps.

But if you were hoping to pair a traditional-style phone keyboard with traditional wired headphones, you're out of luck. The company's website says Clicks Technology is “working on a solution” to allow the keyboard and wired headphones to work simultaneously, but you'll have to choose one or the other for now. The Clicks are also not compatible with MagSafe accessories, though manufacturers hope to eventually change that.

One look at the click layout, and I already see the appeal in having the Tab key, which the standard built-in iPhone keyboard lacks. Moreover, the keyboard is also supposed to make it easier to utilize keyboard shortcuts using its command key (CMD). Click makers highlight shortcuts like starting a search (CMD + Space), accessing the home screen (CMD + H), and scrolling through web pages with the space bar. Clicks claims to support keyboard shortcuts across “many” third-party apps, according to Thursday's announcement.

If the keyboard proves to work well and feels good, it could be a smart way to add more screen real estate to some iPhones since users won't have the touch screen space in the keyboard sometimes. However, I'm curious to know how difficult it will be to hold and navigate a Click-equipped iPhone, including moving from the physical keyboard to the touchscreen as needed, for longer periods.

But the taps also affect iPhone battery life, although the startup claims the impact is minimal.

“When the backlight is turned off, even on a day of heavy usage, battery usage will typically be approximately less than 2%. If the backlight is on, usage may increase by up to another 2%,” the FAQ page for Clicks, which will prompt To take with a grain of salt, read on. The keyboard backlight turns off automatically after 5 seconds of not using the keyboard and can be disabled. The keyboard also has a kill switch.

When asked for more information, Gadway said the keyboard uses about 4.4 mAh when powered on but not in use.

“The background Wh consumption when the backlight is off is about 0.01628 Wh. It is important to note that the Wh depends on the voltage used by the battery, so we take an average of 3.7V,” he added.

Some may also be disappointed to notice that the Clicks lack an emoji key, which has become so prominent in today's culture that some mechanical keyboards and mice have begun to include built-in emoji buttons. Clicks indicate that the keyboard does not have an emoji button because third-party iOS keyboards do not currently support this feature. But there are still ways for Clicks users to bring up the emoji list, including by pressing multiple keys on the keyboard.