PocketMage Is an E Ink PDA for the Modern Era

Gather ‘round kids, while Uncle Cameron tells you a story. Back in the far away times before smartphones, people had these things called PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants). They were kind of like smartphones, except they weren’t very smart and they lacked most connectivity options. But they were very popular among Business™ types. Now Ashtf is bringing the PDA back for the modern era in the form of the E Ink display-equipped PocketMage.

This is still a work in progress, but it already looks great. PocketMage has a folding clamshell design with a tactile keyboard and two screens. The primary screen is an E Ink display, which has great contrast and consumes very little power. The second, smaller screen is an OLED above the keyboard and it provides auxiliary information. That’s good for content that needs a faster refresh rate than the E Ink display can provide.

Rather than an SoC (System-on-Chip) running a full operating system, Ashtf chose to build PocketMage around an ESP32. That runs his own custom OS written in C++. Like the PDAs of yore, that is really just a launcher for a handful of different apps. Right now, those include a text editor, a file manager, a task tracker, a calendar, a journal, a dice-roller, a USB transfer utility, and a dictionary.

That set of apps actually puts PocketMage ahead of a lot of the PDAs from a few decades ago, which is impressive. Users can also develop their own apps.

Once Ashtf completes the PocketMage, he will release everything as an open-source project so people can build their own PDAs. He will also sell kits.

That should happen soon, as he has already posted a build guide to YouTube.