Improve Your Focus with the PocketMage

It’s official: we have been living a lie. More is not always better. After years of chasing the latest and greatest features in all of our electronic devices, people are increasingly coming to this realization. Along with all of the useful new bells and whistles come, well, the bells and whistles of incessant notifications to distract us from truly important things with junk from social media or around-the-clock messages from a boss that thinks we never need to unplug.

It may not be enough of a trend to cause Apple any concern over the projected sales figures for their next iPhone, but old-school phones and PDAs are making a bit of a comeback among those that are becoming disillusioned by constant connectivity. YouTuber Ashtf has long dreamed of having a 1990s-esque PDA that can cut through the distractions that plague modern devices. But using an actual 1990s PDA, with its severe hardware limitations and serial port interface, would only introduce new problems in the world of today.

For this reason, Ashtf has been building his dream handheld productivity device. We have covered the evolution of this device over the past few months, but now it has finally been perfected. And what’s more, you will soon be able to get your own. Due to the huge amount of interest in this project, the PocketMage PDA, as it is called, will finally be offered up in kit form.

For those unfamiliar with the PocketMage, it is a handheld PDA with a folding clamshell case that is powered by an ESP32-S3 microcontroller. When opened, the bottom half of the case has a physical QWERTY keyboard for some clicky feedback while typing. The top half of the device has a large E Ink display for long battery life. But E Ink display refresh rates are slow, so you really do not want to use them for typing on. As such, Ashtf made the unusual choice to also include a small OLED display to show a single line of text in real-time as it is being typed. Once a full word has been typed, it is transferred to the main E Ink display.

To get the PocketMage into more people’s hands, Ashtf has spent a lot of time refining the device design lately. Now the assembly process is as simple as sticking a few PCBs in a case, connecting some wires, and tightening a few screws. Just about anyone should be able to build the device after this streamlining process, so if you are interested in getting your own, be sure to sign up to be notified (no, not another notification!) when the kit is released.

Aside from simplifying assembly, Ashtf also increased the width of the secondary OLED display and added a microSD card slot for storing data. A small buzzer was included so that PocketMage can make some simple sounds. There is also an updated calendar, dictionary, and daily journal app built into the firmware, and data can be backed up to a computer via a USB connection.

There is certainly nothing revolutionary about any of the device’s features, but that is kind of the point. The PocketMage offers a distraction-free way to get some work done, and it is delightfully different from the devices carried around in everyone else’s pockets.