PocketMage Revives the PDA with Innovative E-Paper Display

Personal digital assistants, once epitomized by the classic Palm Pilot, seemed to fade into obscurity with the rise of smartphones. However, much like how Canon has revived an old digital camera to cater to nostalgic users, Talisman Design is launching a crowdfunding campaign for the PocketMage, a clamshell PDA that merges a tactile keyboard with both e-paper and OLED displays in a compact form factor.

On Crowd Supply, you can choose from two preorder options for the PocketMage, along with your pick of accent colors in parchment (gray) or royal purple. The fully assembled version is priced at $235, while the DIY option, which costs $185, requires some assembly on your part. Fortunately, putting together the DIY PocketMage only necessitates a screwdriver—no soldering skills are needed, but a bit of patience will go a long way. Keep in mind that orders placed now are not expected to ship until at least March 2027.

The PocketMage is powered by an ESP32-S3 microcontroller, featuring 2MB of RAM and 16MB of storage, which can be expanded via a microSD card. While it’s designed for straightforward productivity tasks, it offers more functionality than the earliest clamshell PDAs from brands like Casio. This open-source device comes preloaded with apps such as a calendar, journal, dictionary, and a Markdown text editor for note-taking and writing. Additional applications, including a calculator, ebook reader, and web browser, are also available.

The main display is a 3.1-inch, 320×240 e-paper screen that opts out of touchscreen capabilities in favor of a capacitive touch bar on the side for scrolling. Above the compact QWERTY keyboard sits a smaller 1.8-inch, 256x32px OLED screen, which is utilized for functions that require a quicker refresh rate than e-paper can provide. The device also includes a basic piezo speaker, a 1,200mAh battery that lasts about a week between charges, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a USB-C port for connecting peripherals like a larger keyboard. For those who love to tinker, the PocketMage features a powered expansion port, allowing for custom hardware enhancements.