BlackBerry PlayBook : Review

  

    Officially announced in September of last year, the long-awaited BlackBerry PlayBook finally goes on sale April 19th, with a starting price of $499. Featuring the all-new BlackBerry Tablet OS, the PlayBook sports a 7" display that makes this tablet more portable for everyday use than Apple's iPad.

   With solid hardware specs, an operating system that utilizes a gesture-based user interface to deliver true multitasking capabilities and a web browser that supports Adobe Flash, on paper the PlayBook appears to have the raw talent to be a contender. Heck, it even won the first ever Tablet World Series before it was ever released. But pre-release hype is one thing and real-world performance is another. RIM hopes to leverage their success in smartphones and emerge as a major competitor in the tablet game when it steps up to the plate. Does the PlayBook have what it takes to crank out a homerun? Read our full review to find out!

      Research In Motion is going through a major transition right now. While much improvement has come to BlackBerry Smartphones over the years and the upcoming BlackBerry 6.1 OS looks to push things even farther, the traditional BlackBerry OS on phones is hitting a point of maturity where RIM's only option is to start with something new. For companies like Motorola, HTC, Samsung and LG, Google's Android operating system has been the life-saving fresh start that has allowed them to compete against Apple's iOS. Not wanting to lose control of their destiny and be regulated to an Android hardware manufacturer trying to differentiate itself from other Android hardware manufacturers, RIM made the decision to play the game on their own terms. Over the past few years RIM has been building up its team, acquiring the players it needs to fix their historic weaknesses and "future proof" the company (a term RIM's Co-CEO Jim Balsillie used on their last Earnings Call). Some of the acquisitions relevant to the BlackBerry PlayBook include:

   QNX - makers of the powerful MicroKernal QNX Neutrino operating system upon which the BlackBerry Tablet OS is builtTorch Mobile - WebKit browser gurus who fixed up BlackBerry's traditionally poor web browsing experience

   The Astonishing Tribe - Creative geniuses and UI experts who, while arriving a little late on the PlayBook project, helped shape some of the aspects of the user experience and will play a much larger role in this moving ahead (a company called Teknision is responsible for a lot of the user interface design on the PlayBook).

   Dataviz - While RIM didn't buy DataViz outright, they bought a lot of their talent and assets including Documents To Go, which allows for Word, Excel, Powerpoint creation and editing (the premium version of these apps are included free on the PlayBook)

 Key Features

• 7-inch LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch and gesture support
• BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
• 1 GHz dual-core processor
• 1 GB RAM
• Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD video recording
• Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
• Audio playback: MP3, AAC, WMA
• HDMI video output
• Wi-Fi - 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
• Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL, Java
• Ultra thin and portable:
• Measures 5.1"x7.6"x0.4" (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
• Weighs less than a pound (approximately 0.9 lb or 400g)
• RIM intends to also offer 3G and 4G models in the future.

BlackBerry PlayBook is pricing

$400 (64GB)

$300 (32GB)

$200 (16GB)

                                               

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