The heydey of cellular gadgets with built-in keyboards is long gone, eclipsed by larger and greater touchscreens that are actually flipping and folding. But in case your coronary heart nonetheless burns for BlackBerry, the smartphone for anybody who despatched extra emails than textual content messages earlier than the iPhone got here alongside, there’s a brand new DIY mission you may need to take a look at. It’s referred to as the Beepberry, and although it isn’t truly reviving the shape issue, it’s attempting to provide your thumbs the candy, candy really feel of a tiny cellphone keyboard.

The Beepberry is a customized PCB with a teeny-tiny 2.7-inch black and white LCD display screen, a Raspberry Pi Zero W ’spherical again masking the essential OS and wi-fi duties, a battery, and what seems to be like a real BlackBerry keyboard, together with the corporate emblem button and a tiny built-in touchpad. The gadget runs Pi OS Lite, however that’s merely a way to an finish, that finish being the Beeper app and service. The Beepberry is supposed to exchange your cellphone’s chat apps, and solely chat apps, hooking into customary SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Signal, Slack, Discord, and (with a little bit of customized dwelling server magic) Apple’s iMessage.

SQFMI

As the showman says, that’s all there’s, there isn’t any extra. While the Pi Zero W can hook into native Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, the Beepberry can’t connect with cellular networks with out further {hardware}, and in order for you a case you’ll need to 3D print one yourself. (Though they do look fairly snazzy!) As famous by Ars Technica, one of many gadget’s demo movies has the hobby-grade, 3.7-volt battery attached with a rubber band. This disconnected-but-still-reachable idea is strictly for the DIY tinkerer crowd, and it’s not supposed as a retail product. Even although you should purchase it — $79 by itself, $99 with a Pi Zero W within the field, supply anticipated in August.

The Beepberry mission comes from SQFMI, a small-time studio targeted on bizarre little devices like this one, based by Pebble Watch creator Eric Migicovsky. More severe merchandise embrace the Watchy, an open-source e-ink watch that’s principally the Pebble’s religious successor, and the Franky, a barebones moveable gaming gadget that the Beeper is predicated on. Like SQFMI’s earlier tasks, the Beepberry is absolutely open supply and supported by each its creators and customers on GitHub and Discord.

Happy texting.