One thing you can say for sure about Eric Migicovsky: he seems to be having a lot of fun. The founder of Pebble left a three-year stint as a partner at Y Combinator to co-found chat aggregation app Beeper. During that time he dove back into his hardware roots.
In 2017, he launched a Kickstarter for Podcase, an iPhone charging case with built-in AirPods slots. A year ago yesterday, he announced plans to bring back the little phone. It was a small but dedicated movement.
Such words may perhaps be applied to a new project, Beeberry, which is specially designed with Beeper users in mind. As for the second part of the name, that’s because of the use of a real BlackBerry Classic physical keyboard. That and the 400 x 240 Sharp memory e-paper-style LCD are powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero, making it a Blackberry Pi of sorts, if you will.
The idea is – in part – to return to the relatively distraction-free nature of Beeper’s namesake. It’s kind of like a scrappier version of the Light Phone, with fewer features.
There’s a 2,000mAh battery inside, which can presumably last for quite a while given the energy-efficient nature of the whole deal. In case you were worried it was stuck in the late 90s/early s, there’s USB-C charging on board too.
This is all as hacked together as it sounds. The company sells the kits for $79 a pop – or $99 if you want the Raspberry Pi, depending on how much you want to do it. There are only 50 available at launch (presumably fewer as I write this, as he announced it on Twitter yesterday), which will likely sell out.
Beyond that, who’s to say. It’s a bit of a niche within a niche, but it’s a nice throwback to the era when gadget blogging felt a lot…hacker. Designer SQFMI expects the boardless kits to ship in August, with the others arriving next month.
