Personally I think tablets aren't that amazing, and I'd much have a laptop, but this blog is as much yours as it is mine, so today I decided to do a review of the "BlackBerry" PlayBook. This one won't be so much of a review as it will be a description, simply because I'm not a fan of tablets, sorry guys.
Well to start, here's some of the hardware:
- 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.
(Thanks, engadget.com)
Today at Research in Motion (RIM)'s annual BlackBerry Developer's Conference, the company announced this new tablet, the "PlayBook." This tablet will use a completely new OS created with the new QNX, which will offer full OpenGL and POSIX support along with web standards such as HTML5. While company founder Dan Dodge believes this will enable all sorts of new things and be an incredible gaming platform, I feel differently. (So much for no review, eh?) I think this thing's gonna turn into a clone of the iPad, and these things are pretty much useless, if you're gonna spend $1000 on something, why not just get a laptop?
Anywho, This will support Flash 10.1 and Adobe AIR apps. There will be the ability for video conferencing. In terms of interface, the OS looks like a mashup of webOS and the BlackBerry OS, even allowing for multitasking via what amounts to a "card" view. Interestingly, RIM and QNX boasted of the PlayBook's multimedia and gaming functions, but Mike Lazaridis also described the tablet as "an amplified view of what's already on your BlackBerry." That's due largely in part to a function of the tablet which allows you to siphon data off of your BlackBerry handset via Bluetooth tethering and display it on your PlayBook (a la the ill-fated Palm Foleo). While the PlayBook doesn't seem to rely on phone content alone, the press release from the company says that users can "use their tablet and smartphone interchangeably without worrying about syncing or duplicating data." RIM didn't hand out any solid launch dates beyond "early 2011," and of course, there was no mention of retail price.
