Talisman Design has unveiled the PocketMage, an upcoming E Ink personal digital assistant that revives the largely defunct PDA form factor with a heavily wizard-themed twist. It matters as part of a small but persistent movement of companies building distraction-light, long-battery-life pocket devices as an alternative to smartphones, distinguished here by a playful magic-based interface where routine tasks are reframed as spellcasting.

The clamshell device pairs a tactile QWERTY keyboard with two screens: a 3.1-inch 320 x 240 E Ink panel for reading and writing, plus a thinner, fast-refreshing OLED strip above the keyboard for menus. Its proprietary operating system is entirely wizard-themed — renaming a file, for instance, means casting a spell called "Renamio" — and it ships with a digital tarot deck, a dungeon-crawling RPG called Mage's Descent, an ereader, a text-based browser, a calendar and a "Bazaar" app store. It offers a microSD slot, USB-C charging, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and roughly a week of battery life. Now crowdfunded and past its goal, it costs $185 as a self-assembly kit or $235 pre-built, comes in "parchment" or "royal purple", and is due to ship in March 2027.