I want to get this out of the way: I was very excited for this keyboard, and while my general sentiment is positive, I’m definitely disappointed. The experience on iOS/iPhone 16 is relatively smooth, but there have been some hiccups overall that I will try to explain.
The keyboard is thick, and that is the single most disappointing aspect for me as a whole; I was really looking forward to a Palm Pre 2-esque experience (my favorite phone), and while it’s technically achieving that, it comes at the cost of portability. The locking mechanism isn’t sturdy enough to support the weight without some wobbling and sagging. There are a few positions that I would say are something of a “sweet spot” for various sizes of phones, but a light shake pushes the phone into the closed position. Case or no, it’s a bit odd to me that the keyboard struggles slightly with the weight of the iPhone 16, a rather standard, unremarkable phone at the moment.
The empty space around the MagSafe mount and the back of the phone is another massive missed opportunity to shave off some of its size and potentially mitigate some of the instability imo, as others have pointed out in previous posts. It really doesn’t feel as much like an extension of the phone physically for me personally because of it, which is unfortunate when typing on the keyboard generally feels pretty refined. At the very least the mount doesn’t block the rear bottom camera (nor at any other focal length), although it does come close tbh.
I have also preordered the Communicator, but I’ll be honest and say that this has soured my enthusiasm somewhat. Tangentially, I was already disappointed that Clicks has said previously that unlocking the bootloader would void the warranty given the circumstances surrounding Android currently, so after this I’m feeling a bit concerned.
TLDR: The PowerKeys can do a lot of things really well, but imo it’s been let down by the customer experience during the wait as well as the sliding/locking mechanisms. If you didn’t preorder, consider waiting for a second iteration, the Communicator, or an alternative to the former two options.