DIY Fairberry keyboard converts any modern smartphone into a BlackBerry phone

Physical keyboards on smartphones are a rare sight now. But the good part is that the DIY community has come up with many solutions to let you experience what built-in physical keys on smartphones used to feel like. One such project is called Fairberry, which, as the name suggests, aims to offer a BlackBerry phone experience on a modern smartphone.

The good part about the project is that it’s an open-source design. So, theoretically, you should be able to attach the DIY physical keyboard to any modern phone. This also means that Fairberry isn’t a fully polished accessory like the Clicks keyboard case. Instead, you would need to do some customizations and assembly to make it work.

As for the keyboard attachment itself, it’s mainly a custom PCB that allows a BlackBerry Q10 keyboard to work with a modern phone. Depending on the smartphone, the custom board can connect to a micro USB, USB-C, or Lightning port.

For those wondering, BlackBerry launched the Q10 phone back in 2013, and one of its specialties was the physical QWERTY keyboard. While the device is very dated and is discontinued, you can still find its replacement keyboards on AliExpress for around $4.

Getting back to the custom PCB of Fairberry keyboard, the creator, Dakkaron, originally designed it to work with Fairphone 4. However, it is possible to customize the design and change the connector to make the board compatible with any phone. As for acquiring the PCB, you can send the customized design to a PCB manufacturing company.

Besides the custom PCB, you would also need to work with the 3D-printed housing to make the case fit on your phone. On that note, the Fairberry keyboard has been recently updated to 3.0. This latest version of the DIY project makes the entire assembly and customization process a bit easier. You can learn more from the official GitHub repo found in this link.

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