This BlackBerry Ripoff Is My Only Hope at Feeling Young Again

Gizmodo

4 days ago

I love my phone. Guys, no… I love my phone so much. I hate that I love my phone, but I love it nonetheless. I love my phone so much that I spend all day typing stupid little words into its stupid little screen and waiting for stupid little responses. I love my phone, but it does not love me, especially when it comes to typing. I'm so bad at typing. If there were a contest to try and fail to type the least amount of words in the most amount of attempts, I'd win the triple crown platinum all-time iron chef trophy (on one leg with my eyes closed). That's a me problem for sure, but if you're old enough to remember a time before social media, it may be a you problem, too.
Don't worry, though; there's a solution to your God-awful typing, and it's been under your nose for a long time, technically. The solution: this blatant BlackBerry ripoff with a physical keyboard, Android 15, and 5G connectivity.
Introducing Titan 2 — the phone that can move forward and look back! 👀
As the latest 𝟓𝐆 𝐐𝐖𝐄𝐑𝐓𝐘 smartphone running 𝗔𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗼𝗶𝗱 𝟭𝟱, Titan 2 blends classic design with modern performance. 🚀 Its redesigned physical keyboard brings back the tactile satisfaction of real… pic.twitter.com/9H11WKMmuk
— Unihertz (@Unihertz) June 26, 2025Introducing the Titan 2, a new crowdfunded phone from Unihertz that (like its predecessor, the Titan 1) clearly takes its cues from BlackBerry. Most importantly, there's a full QWERTY keyboard with real buttons that you can press with your tired-ass thumbs to produce words that hopefully construct whole sentences. It's a story as old as time, but in a never-ending sea of touchscreens, somehow a breath of fresh air—or at least recycled, non-touchscreen air. If you're wondering how the hell you scroll on something like this, I'm also excited to relay that there's a scroll sensor built into the freaking keyboard. That means you can just swipe on the keys to ingest all the brain-rotting TikToks your internet-addled brain desires. I have my doubts about how well that feature works, but it's a nice flourish nonetheless. Also, don't worry, you can still use the display as a standard touchscreen if you so choose.
On top of all of that, there's also a screen on the back of this thing, which is bonkers. Unihertz, on its Kickstarter page, describes this feature as follows: 'Titan 2 features a 4.5-inch square primary display with a resolution of 1,440 × 1,440 pixels, alongside a secondary rear display for an even more imaginative dual-screen experience. Its flat-edge design adds a modern, sleek touch to the device.' Basically, it looks like you can see timers and notifications on the second, smaller screen, which is nice if you want to flip your phone upside down and give your equally tired eyes a bit of a rest but still keep a smaller, tired eye on the influx of Slack messages you desperately want to ignore. Camera-wise, there's nothing really to write home about—there's a 50-megapixel front-facing sensor and a 32-megapixel selfie camera—but that's probably not why you'd be interested in a phone like this anyway.
There's something really interesting about the fact that a phone like the Titan 2 or the Titan 1 can exist in this world where everything is a glass slab, and as a screen-addicted millennial, I think I understand the appeal. As much as technologies like touchscreens and autocorrect have become the lynchpin and launchpad to our smartphone experience, I think there's still something weirdly unintuitive about typing on a flat glass surface. My thumbs, no matter how much I try to train them, sometimes just don't want to cooperate, and autocorrect sometimes feels equally as unruly. There's a simplicity and tactility that I crave, and clearly others do too. As of writing this, the Titan 2 has $1,005,074 from backers already, and the fact that Unihertz was able to make a sequel to its 2019 Titan in the first place says a lot. It's going for around $271 and estimated delivery is currently October. Let's just be honest: I'll probably never feel young again, but hats off to Unihertz because a physical keyboard might at the very least make me feel less old.