Blackberry PlayBook released – is it really a business touch tablet as intended?

RIM announced the BlackBerry PlayBook yesterday and it is what they call a 7 inch business touch screen tablet. From starters, you must agree that the name is not really business related. I mean OK, they dropped BlackPad (which I for one loved), but they could have got something better.

Anyway, we can debate on this subject for a while, that’s not the point. Let’s take a look at this tablet and see if it is actually any good.

First, in terms of aesthetics, I can say I really dig the PlayBook. It is really slim (0.4 inches – so slimmer than the iPad) and pretty compact, having a 7 inch display, although that big bezel around it does add to its overall footprint. There’s just the big display on the front and connectors are on the sides. All in all, in terms of design, the BlackBerry Playbook scores high points with me and i expect it ot be solid built also, like the latest BlackBerry smartphones are.

BlackBerry PlayBook - 7 inch tablet with nice looks and powerful specs

Second, let’s take a look at the specs:

• 7 inch 1024 x 600 px wide capacitive touch display
• dual core ARM A9 CPU, clocked at 1 GHz + 1 GB of memory
• proprietary QNX-based operating system
• Wi-Fi N, Bluetooth, no 3G
• supports multitasking, Flash 10.1, Adobe AIR, 1080P multimedia content, DLNA video streaming
• comes with 2 cameras (3MP front and 5 MP rear-facing)
• microUSB and HDMI ports
• measures 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches (130 x 194 x 10 mm) and weighs 0.9 pounds (400 g)

You will notice that there’s quite some powerful hardware inside this compact tablet and while I certainly appreciate power, that might not be good news for battery life. For now though we know nothing about it, or the battery actually, so let’s hope autonomy will be decent. You might have also noticed that there’s no 3G option, that’s because the PlayBook tethers with BlackBerry phones via Bluetooth, in order to connect to Internet on the go. It also syncs your tasks, calendar, schedule and other stuff with the phone.

Tethers and syncs with BlackBerry phones

There’s one important thing about this tablet, in my opinion the most important impediment standing between it and success: it uses a proprietary operating system and it’s not the same one used on RIM’s phones. Knowing the problems Blackberry have with the lack of applications for those phones, I’m pretty sure the same thing will happen with their tablet also. Unless RIM decides to invest heavily in apps and software developing, as I’m pretty sure developers won’t focus on this device, at least not until it becomes fairly popular and they will consider their efforts could be worth. And this is what actually makes a tablet popular: the apps. See the clip below on the PlayBook with some details on its interface.

RIM has 6+ months to work on this aspect, as they scheduled the BlackBerry Playbook to hit the stores in Q1 2011 in the States. By the second quarter is should be available worldwide also.  No details on pricing yet, but since this is a enterprise tablet and packs powerful hardware and features, I doubt it will be too cheap.

Still, the question remains: is the BlackBerry PlayBook really a touch tablet meant for business environments? For the moment, its only argument is the fact that it is a BlackBerry (comes with BlackBerry Enterprise Server compatibility  and syncs with RIM phones), as we know that they do monopolize business smartphones segment. Besides that, most features point towards a multimedia device, like all other touch-tablets and only specific applications useful in business environments could make the difference, if they were to be developed.

More details will be available in the next months, so sty tuned on the site, we wi’ll update once we find new interesting stuff on RIM’s BlackBerry Playbook , so better subscribe if you don’t want to miss anything.

Via BlackBerry

Tags: 7 inch tablets, BlackBerry PlayBook, touch screen tablets, touch tablet

Last updated: March 30, 2012 | Published: September 28th, 2010 | Add the first comment!