I was frustrated by the lack of decent phones with physical keyboards. The phones that are currently available are hard to buy, crap, expensive, are old, outdated, have bad software support and/or disappointing hardware.

So I decided to design and build one myself.

This is a Fairphone 4 with a DIY, open source keyboard attachment. It uses a spare Blackberry Q10 keyboard and a custom, self designed Arduino-compatible mainboard, which translates the keyboard matrix to regular USB HID.

This means, it works on any phone without the need of any software modification at all. If the phone can handle a USB keyboard, it can handle this one.

All that’s necessary to make it compatible to any other phone is to adjust the case to fit that phone.

(And yes, that’s XFCE running on Ubuntu in a chroot jail.)

  •  Didros   ( @Didros@beehaw.org ) 
    2•1 year ago

    Maybe a design like the sidekick? It had an off center swivel point so that when the back spins you have access to the keyboard. You could run the USB wires through the swivel point.

    Obviously not a physical designer at all. But the weight problem could maybe be solved if you center the weight while closed and let the keyboard be the heavy side when it’s out?