The PocketMage resurrects the PDA with an e-paper screen

Personal digital assistants like the iconic Palm Pilot were one of many devices we thought went extinct with the arrival of the smartphone. But similar to Canon resurrecting a nearly decade-old digital camera to appeal to point-and-shoot fans, Talisman Design is crowdfunding a clamshell PDA called the PocketMage that combines a tactile keyboard with both e-paper and OLED displays in a pocketable device.

There are two different preorder options for the PocketMage on Crowd Supply, plus you get your choice of parchment (gray) or royal purple accent colors. The $235 version comes fully assembled, while the cheaper $185 version requires you to build it yourself. However, the DIY PocketMage only requires a screwdriver to put together. Soldering skills are not needed, but patience is. Orders placed now aren’t expected to ship until March 2027 at the earliest.

Powered by an ESP32-S3 microcontroller with just 2MB of RAM and 16MB of storage (expandable with a microSD card), the PocketMage is geared toward simple productivity tasks, but is a bit more capable than the earliest clamshell PDAs from companies like Casio. The open-source device comes with apps including a calendar, journal, dictionary, and a Markdown text editor for writing or taking notes. Additional apps like a calculator, ebook reader, and web browser are already available.

The PocketMage’s primary display is a 3.1-inch, 320×240 e-paper screen that forgoes touchscreen functionality for a capacitive touch bar on the side that can be used for scrolling. Above the PDA’s tiny QWERTY keyboard is a smaller 1.8-inch, 256x32px OLED screen used for functions like menus that require a higher refresh rate than e-paper offers. There’s also a basic piezo speaker, a 1,200mAh battery good for about a week’s use between charges, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a USB-C port compatible with peripherals like a larger keyboard. For tinkerers and developers, the PocketMage even includes a powered expansion port for expanding its capabilities with custom hardware.