The BlackBerry Passport, the square-screened keyboard phone that can still turn heads, appears to be on giving grounds a second courtesy of Android. The same team that recently updated the aging BlackBerry Classic, Zinwa Technologies, has officially announced it’s already working on a do‑it‑yourself kit which rips out the internals of the Passport and replaces them with modern Android hardware, giving one of the most unique devices of the 2010s an unlikely resurrection.
This time around, enthusiasts won’t be able to buy a finished handset. Instead, Zinwa says it will ship a kit for people who are handy and already own a Passport of the original variety. The timeline is not immediate — availability is sometime around 2026, we’re told — but the project represents a significant milestone in maintaining a beloved form factor using modern software and components.
What Zinwa has for BlackBerry Passport holders
Zinwa says the Passport kit, codenamed P26 internally, is a whole electronics swap with the chassis and display (combined with physical QWERTY) being retained.
So far the team has been able to confirm that the keyboard and screen mapping works, a critical accomplishment in light of the Passport’s touch‑capacitive keys and 1:1 4.5‑inch screen. There’s still some work left to be done in the mainboard, camera, battery and thermal design though — something that was tackled in the Classic build.
Exact specifications are not locked. For comparison, Zinwa’s Classic rebuild (sold in the past as Q25 Pro) relies on a newer MediaTek Helio G99 platform, ships with larger battery, better cameras and USB‑C, and runs near‑stock Android 13. I would expect that Passport kits will target at least this price point, but Zinwa is not making any promises until the hardware has been validated.
Why kits, and not pre‑built phones, for the Passport
There will not be pre‑built Passports for sale (unlike the Classic revival, which you can buy either assembled or in a kit). The reason is supply. But good condition original Passport hardware is significantly more rare and sourcing consistent donor shells at scale even more so. By concentrating on a kit, Zinwa can make available to hobby builders without waiting for the bottleneck of chassis availability or refurb compliance.
The approach is similar to niche retro projects seen in the handheld gaming space, where boards are made available for sale alongside enthusiasts who add their own cases around them. It’s a cost‑saving measure that maintains the identity of each contributing device — even if it might raise the barrier to entry for casual fans.
Compatibility and key limitations for the Passport
Zinwa has also revealed the kit works on first‑generation BlackBerry Passport only and will not work for the Silver Edition. That’s because the Silver Edition is slightly harder to find and there are some subtle differences in its structure that would make a single‑board design more challenging. If you have a regular‑ass Passport in reasonable condition, you’re the target audience.
There will be soldering, fiddly disassembly and running of cables. They derive from what the team is sharing on its Discord channel (and then shared by sites like Liliputing), which point to the kit also being accompanied by thorough documentation. For those who don’t want to wait, enterprising hobbyists on Reddit have shown Android conversion projects with old hardware by swapping storage chips — but these are limited to Android 11 at best and do nothing for thermal or battery issues.
Classic retrofit lessons that guide the Passport
The Classic project demonstrated that a tasteful modernization can seem native rather than hacked on. Backing that up are tight integration touches: correct key/shortcut mapping, cohesive gesture support, fine‑tuned haptics and a power profile that understands the constraints of a small chassis. For the Passport there’s even more complexity due to the touch‑capacitive function using an independent layer on top of the 1440×1440 display, and drivers have been custom calibrated warranting that no ‘ghost touches’ or input lag issues would surface.
Thermals will matter, too. The original Passport didn’t have the infrastructure to deal with prolonged loads coming from today’s apps. A well‑binned, efficient SoC – say something more akin to midrange silicon as opposed to a flagship one – with aggressive performance governors should probably be the sweet spot in terms of responsiveness, thermals and battery life.
Why it matters — nostalgia aside, for modern users
Keyboard phones are all but extinct, and yet there remains a diehard contingent who swear by physical typing, as well as the distraction‑resistant ergonomics of wide‑aspect document viewing. Bringing Android to this aspect ratio provides pros and enthusiasts with a more reasonable daily driver while still enjoying today’s apps and security updates, but without sacrificing the tactile user experience that glassy slabs cannot provide.
There’s also a sustainability angle. The world produced about 62 million metric tons of e‑waste in 2022, according to the Global E‑waste Monitor by ITU and UNITAR, just over a fifth of which was recycled officially. Projects that increase device lifespans — particularly by reusing housings and displays — chip away at that problem while celebrating sharp industrial design.
The road ahead for Passport on Android through 2026
And then it will be the waiting that’ll be the worst. Zinwa, aiming for a 2026 target deadline, still has parts to finalize and steps of certification to accomplish and the production ramp. If the Classic is any indication, firmware updates and fine‑tuning features will be shaped by community feedback post‑launch.
It is, for BlackBerry holdouts, the most believable route yet back to life in a Passport with contemporary software, and not just a glass‑cased glimmer of…yesteryear. If Zinwa nails the execution — a good, clean implementation of Android; tight integration with the keyboard; performance that makes sense — the Passport could again be an out‑of‑place square peg for some people’s daily workflows.