How-to: a physical keyboard for Huawei P8 Lite

Original post in Finnish HERE.

As you may have noticed, I am so tired of the fact that the phone models with a physical keyboard are non-existent. Well, now that we, the power users, just have to deal with it, I decided to make my own keyboard. It's not very expensive (about $25 currently) and I really recommend making this if you're that guy who likes to hear and feel the nice clicks. It's going to be a big, ugly monster if you ask a common slab user, but for us it's actually not bad, even though I'm the one saying this :D

I chose P8 Lite because it has the camera in the corner so that the cover doesn't block the view at all. I have a Samsung Galaxy S5, but the problem for that model is that the camera lens is in the middle so it's not a good option if you like to do photographing.

What you need:
- Dremel or similar small hobby drill
- glue
- a screwdriver

What you'll need to buy:
- an iPhone 6 keyboard cover - $19.62
- Huawei P8 Lite's cover x 2 - $5.50 total
(optional: keyboard stickers for your local layout, I use Scandinavian)

So let's begin. Tear the sticker off from the cover.

Remove the screws and then the phone holder part. In the image below the keyboard part is already fitted to the P8 Lite cover.

Now you can see that the cover is a wee bit taller than the keyboard part, so now it's time to use the Dremel to saw a few millimeter off.

Now fit the iPhone's holder part to the P8 Lite's holder part (not the one you just used the Dremel on) and drill holes to the same places that the iPhone's holder has. Also, remove the aluminium backplate from the P8 Lite's cover.

Clean the drilled holes a bit and modify them so that the screws sink in there nicely. If the screws you removed are too short, there are some longer screws in the keyboard part which you can take out and use. You probably will have to saw them a bit after.