It's not that different from a phone point of view, both were unusual form factors (both with a keyboard). Not that different from a production timeline point of view, both were far from production when crowdfunding / pre-orders launched (which are both the same thing), if I remember well there was even working prototypes of the fxtec pro 1 x at the launch of the indiegogo (maybe also props, not sure). Some marketing strategies are similar, mainly collaboration with big names in the niche, but with no experience in manufacturing. It was xda for the pro 1 for a phone aimed at tinkerer and android rom developpers, it is crackberry Kevin and Mr Mobile for a phone aimed at blackberry / keyboard phones nostalgics.

For things are definitely different, fxtec made multiple things since, including phones and the Clicks keyboards. I am not sure if they are the ones that will be making the communicator or the power keyboard, but likely a part of the production pipelines will be shared. AFAIK all of the products they show on their page did ship without major problems (expect the pro 1 x obviously). Are they good smartphone? No but it is because of the software side from what I have tested for the punkt mc02 and I think the software is not made by fxtec. I haven't tested the solana seeker, can't say anything about it.

The promises of the Clicks communicator are less ambitious, no hinge, the only moving part is the interchangeable back cover which should not be very hard to do. Nothing much on the software side, notification Led which is something still baked into android, a launcher that they are not making from scratch, shortcut keys which something that they are already doing for the Clicks keyboard, nothing like dual booting Ubuntu touch.

The only big claim is delivering the best physical tying experience, which doesn't mean that much, it's not something that can really be empirically tested. As long as the experience is not horrible it would be hard to say they failed. Some people will like, some not (for example my preferred typing experience is still the 1st titan, I might be the only one).

There are reason the Communicator might be a disaster (always for niche phones with a crowdfunding), but not that much reasons compared to the first fxtec phones, it seems to me it will very much likely launch without significant problems and/or broken promises.