Zinwa Revives BlackBerry Passport with DIY and Pre-Installed Kits
You might remember that Zinwa Technologies announced in the summer of 2025 its plans to modernize real BlackBerry phones. The company takes a classic model, replaces the chipset with a more modern one, increases storage, and swaps BlackBerry's OS for Android 14.
Zinwa's Previous Retrofit: The Q25
Zinwa has already released the Q25, a “reboot” of the BlackBerry Q20 “Classic.” This first retrofitted model, the Zinwa Q25 Pro, utilized the original BlackBerry Classic Q20's chassis, keyboard, capacitive trackpad, and 3.5-inch 720 x 720 display. The original 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus (MSM8960) was replaced with a MediaTek Helio G99.
The revamped Zinwa Q25 boasts 12GB of RAM (up from the original’s 2GB) and 256GB of storage (up from 16GB of internal storage and support for a 128GB microSD card on the BlackBerry Q20). The price was $400, but sales were limited due to a lack of 5G support and regulatory issues that led Zinwa to cancel sales in India.
The BlackBerry Passport Returns
This month, Zinwa will release both a DIY kit and a pre-installed kit based on the BlackBerry Passport, potentially generating considerable excitement as the Passport is brought back from obsolescence. The phone was a fan-favorite, largely due to its wide 1440 x 1440 resolution LCD screen and hybrid QWERTY keyboard combining virtual and physical elements.
BlackBerry famously promoted the Passport's wide display with an ad showcasing a doctor diagnosing a patient using the phone's extra screen real estate, a feature unavailable on an iPhone at the time. The tagline was “Work Wide.”
The Zinwa P26 DIY Kit
Zinwa's Passport DIY kit, known as the P26, is designed as a do-it-yourself mainboard upgrade swap. The P26 DIY kit replaces the original BlackBerry Passport's Snapdragon 801 chipset with the mid-range MediaTek Helio G99, along with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. Owners of a Passport can order the DIY kit and install these components into their existing handset.
Instead of running on BlackBerry 10 OS, the Zinwa P26 will be powered by Android 14.