"Blackberry Pi" DIY Build ("Pocket Linux")
"Blackberry Pi" DIY Build ("Pocket Linux")
Update 2023/08/13: Thanks to Tom Nardi’s introduction on Hackaday, I kinda feel obligated to provide a bit more details about this project. So more information and some small updates are incl…
I've been wanting to build one of these for a while now. But every time I think about ordering some of the parts and maybe start 3D printing a housing I stop and think am I really going to use it or is this just going to collect dust as I just use my phone instead.
For those who have built one of these... what do you use it for? Especially what tasks that couldn't be accomplished by a phone which you carry with you anyways.
I went another route: https://github.com/Dakkaron/Fairberry
Interesting ! Would people buy phones with such a keyboard nowadays ?
I have never used a blackberry myself, but seeing this project made me curious whether there is market for such a product.
I actually never used a real blackberry either, only their replacement keyboards ;)
Every time I post about this, there are a few people who say they'd pay for one. They usually offered €50-200 for one. But so far afaik nobody has built one themselves. Apparently the crowd who is brave enough to replicate this and the crowd that wants a keyboard don't overlap a lot.
I'd guess, if I were to sell these, I could probably sell a few hundred to a few thousand.
There are some keyboard phones on the market, though only from very niche manufacturers (e.g. Fxtec and Unihertz). And even though these phones are usually priced much higher than a similar phone without keyboard would be, and even though they have crappy hardware and outdated crappy software, they seem to sell enough to keep their manufacturers afloat.
The Fairberry has the advantage that you can couple it with a phone of your choice. This makes it the only way I know to get a modern phone with good specs and a hardware keyboard.
(I probably own the hardware-wise best keyboard smartphone in the world right now :) )
My wish would be that someone would pick this up, make a few thousand of them and sell them. I wouldn't even need to make money from that, I'd just be happy if people could get their hands on these.
That's not a great first layer, but in this print it looks awesome.
This is sweet. I wonder if it would be possible to use a keypad from a blackberry key one. Those ones have a trackpad integrated
The advantage of the Q10/Q20 keypads is that they are very well documented and much cheaper. The KeyOne and Key2 keypads have virtually no open source documentation.