Critical viewpoint on the much hyped BlackBerry Playbook

All the hype:

The Playbook from the hallowed house of Blackberry has been the Tab that everyone was looking out for and when it did arrive , it is all that – well at least at the first look. It is smart, stylish , beautiful and small , at least smaller than and iPad and it is as big as Samsung Galaxy, though it’s 7 inch screen looks smaller. The design is awesome with an ingenious programming called BlackBerry Bridge , which connects the BlackBerry Smartphone and the play book.

blackberry playbook

The core processor is 1GHz dual-core with a 1GB RAM , making the glide fast and smooth, without any obvious struggle with multi-tasking. The high definition display is crisp and has great viewing angles and the speakers are loud. It is a great device for watching movies, viewing photos and listening to music on the go- since it is not too small like a smart phone and not to big like an iPod or a Xoom. It is perfect size, and subtle without letting everyone know that you own a tab.

Features:

Connectivity:

Playbook is going to have different sorts of 4G this year, which include a WiMAX sampler for sprint, HSPA+ and LTE for other carriers. Bluetooth and 802.11 a/b/g/n connectivity are of course part of the deal and with the Bluetooth a keyboard and mouse can be paired up where you get a tiny cursor on the screen – left clicks for taps and right clicks for gestures which are initiated at the edge of the screen rather than off screen, which turns intuitive gestures into awkward mouse flicks

Battery life:

The average battery backup of playbook is about 7 hours which is more than a Samsung galaxy but of course less than the iPad. But in view of day to day usage, WiFi, reasonably bright screen, it can survive an all working day at office enough energy left to let you have fun in your transit time.

Operating system:

The PlayBook is running on BlackBerry tablet OS which as RIM has announced is powered by QNX technology , with the OS built on QNX’s Neutrino microkernel.

It supports a lot if standard platforms and technologies like POSIX OS, SMP, Open GL, BlackBerry 6, WebKit, Java, Adobe Flash and AIR, along with RIM's new BlackBerry WebWorks platform. Apps written for WebWorks will run on BlackBerry 6 or the PlayBook, while Java makes it easier for developers to port Java-based BlackBerry 6 apps. OpenGL offers some serious potential for graphically intense games.

The Capacitive digitizers recognize a variety of gestures with system gestures originating to the side of the pixels and terminating on the screen , except the gesture to turn the screen on which requires dragging all the way from bezel to bezel.

Keyboard:

When one first sees it, the PlayBook Keyboard seems mighty nice, with widely spaced keys that you can reach with your thumbs given you are holding the tablet by its horizontal extents and when flipped into portrait reaching is easier but you need to be more precise with your keying.

The biggest drawback however is that neither numbers nor special keys are available without accessing the symbol menu. You can’t even access the regular symbols like the exclamation and question mark without the symbol key which is rather irritating.

Browser:

RIM gives a full web kit browser for surfing which is good enough. It is also provided with Flash Player 10.1. The loading is quick with natural rendering in full desktop mode with pinch-to-zoom and smooth motion.

• YouTube videos run seamlessly even when embedded within pages not to mention the dedicated app. Flash games too, can be played particularly well.

Calculator:

It's one of the many apps on the tablet developed by The Astonishing Tribe, a dev team acquired by RIM who previously worked to define much of the look and feel of Android. The calculator app in particular stands out with the team's patented style. Whether you're in standard or scientific mode, a "paper" tally prints each calculation, digital pulp that can be virtually torn off and disposed which gives a slight feeling of an actual calculation being done on an actual paper. More practical feature however, is the integrated unit converter, which makes all the conversions incredible easy.

Camera:

Here comes one of the best features of the Playbook – the dual cameras - a 3MP cam facing front and one 5MP on the rear.

Adobe Reader:

Adobe reader is somewhat of a necessary evil in Tabs as these, specially what with the orientation of Blackberry. Adobe in this tab comes with a custom version of the reader and though not very interesting is great performance wise – with thumb surfing, pinch zooming and even files with about an MB on each page run quite smoothly.

BlackBerry PlayBook additional apps:

BlackBerry PlayBook comes with two specific media discovery applications -

7digital Music Store:

7digital Music Store offers over 13 million songs, and tracks are available at prices starting as low as $0.79 with bitrates up to 320 kbps (DRM free).The content is stored in the cloud via a digital music locker for easy portability across devices and to help against accidental loss. This store also includes a recommendation engine that features content based upon recent browsing and purchase activity.

BlackBerry Podcasts:

The BlackBerry Podcasts app for the BlackBerry PlayBook includes 19 content categories, ranging from sports to entertainment to business, including popular content .BlackBerry Podcasts allows users to preview an episode before downloading or subscribing to it, and it automatically downloads new podcasts for subscribed channels.

Although PlayBook packs a lot of attractions it has a bit of a downside with some major stuff missing -

No options for -Native email client,Calender,Contacts

Non-replaceable battery

Limited amount of third party applications

No memory card slot

No 3G version available as of now

No kickstand – it cannot stand on a table without the help of a dock stand or case

And one of the biggest let downs is the way buttons have been provided. They're too small and poorly positioned. The tiny, round power button is particularly difficult to press. Worse yet, it doubles as the wake button. Apple separated the home and power buttons on the iPad and iPad 2.The PlayBook's slightly recessed, do-it-all button manages to do nothing particularly well. Putting the buttons along the top edge gives the PlayBook a nice, clean face, but reaching for the button every time and hard pressing to start the tab makes for an uncomfortable experience every time.

Price:

The BlackBerry PlayBook with Wi-Fi is said to arrive in three models, featuring 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of storage priced at $499, $599 and $699 respectively.

What others have to say

Kevin Michaluk of CrackBerry says:

If you like the size of the device and feel of the BlackBerry Tablet OS, it may be the tablet for you, especially if you plan to use it mainly for web browsing, media consumption, and if you own a BlackBerry, to take advantage of the Bridge functionality.

Chris Martin from The Inquirer says:

If entertainment and media features work as well as RIM says they will, then the Blackberry Playbook tablet could turn out to be a great combination of work and play.

Picture Gallery

Blackberry-playbook

Via: GSM Arena