Saturday 26 March 2011

BlackBerry PlayBook Ready to release

Tablets are becoming a bigger part of our business everyday and the launch of the BlackBerry PlayBook will heighten the level of excitement in this category

The BlackBerry PlayBook is an amazing tablet that is already being widely praised as a multi-tasking powerhouse with an uncompromised Web experience and an ultra-portable design

RIM is making the new tablet device available in over 20,000 locations around the US and Canada

This particular model is the WiFi only model. For those wanting the larger capacity devices, these are priced at $599 and $699 for 32GB and 64GB respectively.

The operating system used is based around QNX that RIM acquired in recent months. The new OS provides a fairly fluid interface as well as powerful multitasking which from our observations, works extremely well.

The technical specs reveal that the PlayBook tablet has a 7 inch screen which has a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. The screen uses capacitive touch. The processor is a 1GHz dual-core chip. It has 1GB of RAM as well as up to 64GB of storage (prices listed above). It includes front and rear cameras which can capture at 3MP and 5MP respectively. Wireless connectivity is built in of course.

The PlayBook also works as a companion device to a BlackBerry Smartphone.The browser looks to be quite powerful too and includes Adobe Flash as well as HTML5 compatibility.

7-inch LCD, 1024 by 600, WSVGA, capacitive touchscreen with full multi-touch and gesture support
BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing

 BlackBerry PlayBook Specifications :

  • 1 GHz Dual Core processor
  • 1GB RAM
  • Dual cameras (3 MP front facing, 5MP 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
  • 6-axis motion sensor
  • 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
  • Measures 5.1" by 7.6" by 0.4" (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
  • Weighs less than a pound (approximately 0.9 lb or 400g)

BlackBerry developer Research in Motion has also announced the PlayBook's price tag for three different models, with a 16GB model costing $499.99, a 32GB model costing $599.99 and the top-level 64GB model costing $699.99.

BlackBerry PlayBook release date for North America: April 19.