This Cyberdeck Pocket PC is Giving Big BlackBerry Vibes

Apple may have sealed BlackBerry’s fate when they released the iPhone, but many of us miss having a physical keyboard. Touchscreen keyboards always seem like a compromise and they’d be unbearable if it weren’t for autocorrect. If you’re doing a lot of typing, a physical keyboard is still superior and BlackBerry keyboards are a popular option, even today. Redditor ZitaoTech took advantage of a BlackBerry 9900 keyboard to build this pocket PC-style cyberdeck.

The BlackBerry 9900 was one of the last BlackBerry models on the market and had a really great keyboard. The 9900 had a touchscreen, so the keyboard was compact and featured an optical trackpad at the top. Surprisingly, you can still find new BlackBerry 9900 keyboards to use in your projects and that is exactly what ZitaoTech did.

ZitaoTech’s cyberdeck is quite a bit bigger than a BlackBerry 9900, so it has enough room for some serious hardware in addition to the keyboard. There is a full Raspberry Pi 4 Model B in there, plus a 3.95” touchscreen with a resolution of 720×720. There are even two 18650 lithium batteries and ZitaoTech says that they’re good for 8-9 hours of use.

To get the BlackBerry 9900 keyboard connected to the Raspberry Pi SBC, ZitaoTech designed a custom PCB based on a Raspberry Pi RP2040. That reads the input from the keyboard and passes it along to the Raspberry Pi SBC like a standard USB HID for maximum compatibility. That custom PCB also has the hardware to control the other functions, such as charging.

Those components all fit into a tidy 3D-printed enclosure. That makes several important things accessible, including the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins, USB ports, and Ethernet port, as well as the batteries for each replacement.

ZitaoTech says that they have a plan to sell this cyberdeck at some point, so be sure to keep an eye out for that if you want to get your own hands on one of these.