long loooong maaaaan

I would love an foldable case with a keyboard on one side. Like a little Laptop. Would be so neat.

Edit, something like this:

I was looking for something like it for years. Or a HTC Desire Z style case with a slideout keyboard, even Bluetooth.

I miss texting in landscape.

Depending on the phone, there might be some custom ROM or something like PostmarketOS.

Marry me!

Thanks for the offer, but you are too late for that ;)

It’s a pretty big compromise compared with BB phones (you pretty much have to remove the keyboard to put the phone in your pocket or charge it, right?)

I don't remove the keyboard when I put it in my pocket. But for charging it needs to be removed, since I didn't add pass-through charging to the whole thing. Pass through charging is really complicated and I already spent a lot of time on this.

but I would totally use one if I could get something like this for my phone.

If you got some CAD skills, you can just adjust the case for any phone you like. It should even work with an iPhone, you just need to use a Lightning-to-USB-OTG solder connector instead of the USB-C-to-OTG solder connector I am using.

But yeah, that's a concept issue here. The case needs to be adjusted for every specific phone. So if anyone was do do this commercially, they'd probably have to pick 2-3 different devices to support and that's it.

Why no one is simply making keyboard cases? Phone case with a bluetooth keyboard doesn’t look like a very expensive/complicate project.

There are a few issues. The device-specificity is one, but another one is that Blackberry still had some patents on phone keyboards and they just sold them to a patent troll company. Might not be a big issue for a large company, but experimental accessories are usually made by small companies who are happy to output just a few tens of thousands of units max. And for a little company like that, paying off a patent troll is too expensive to make it worthwhile.

Also, small keyboards are surprisingly hard (read expensive) to make on a small scale. I got lucky that there are still enough BBQ10 spare keyboards around, but the total supply isn't exactly huge and I wouldn't bet a company on that kind of supply.

So if you want one, make yourself one before the BBQ10 spare keyboards are gone.

Yeah, me too. But since there's nothing decent on the market, I had to make it myself.

Sadly not. Coming from a Droid 4, a side sliding keyboard was my first approach (actually my first 8 prototypes were some form of side slide keyboard) but it's impossible due to the center of gravity. On all keyboard phones, the mainboard and battery where in the keyboard part, with only the light screen on the top half. With a keyboard attachment that's not possible.

So I gave up and made this here, and it just worked great. I would still prefer a side sliding keyboard, but I fear it's not possible to make a decent one.

It won't run Crysis, but if performance is not a criterium, it does work.

It's actually not too bad. It's worse to put it into a small pocket ;)

I fear, this whole thing would be 100% incompatible with woman's trousers.

Nah, haven't seen it yet. Sorry...

Yeah, it would be nice. I would also prefer a horizontal version.

That's sadly not really possible, though. The issue is that you need most of the weight in the keyboard part of a horizontal keyboard phone. If you look at any of these, they all have battery, mainboard, cameras and IO in the keyboard part of the phone, with only the screen being on the other part.

With a keyboard attachment, that's not possible. You have all the weight up top. That means, you can never get the center of gravity in a comfortable position.

Believe me, I tried. I only had horizontal keyboard phones before, and the first 8 prototypes where some kind of side-sliding phone, and they all didn't work out, because of the COG. Even if I added weights to the keyboard, that wasn't enough. To balance the ~225g of that phone, I'd have to add >300g to the keyboard, and I really don't want to carry a 0.5kg training weight in my pocket at all times.

So I gave up and stuck a Blackberry keyboard onto my phone :)

Funnily, yes it is. At least in theory, I haven't tested it.

I am not using the USB connector directly, but instead I have a small USB OTG breakout board in between, which has USB C on one side and USB 2.0 OTG on the other side.

The same kind of board exists for Micro USB (which I tested on my last phone) and Lightning.

So all you need to do is swap the connector and that's that. And of course adjust the case design files to fit an iPhone.