All about BlackBerry PlayBook

There are few days left for much awaited Tablet PC from Research In Motion, the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ to come in stores across North America for sale. BlackBerry® PlayBook™ was displayed on many events like CES 2011, Mobile World Congress in Spain.

Research In Motion (RIM) acquired QNX Software Unit from Harman International in April 2010 for developing Tablet OS. 7-inch BlackBerry® PlayBook™ will run on QNX OS with 1GHz Dual Core Processor, 1GB RAM, Dual HD cameras, Adobe Flash 10.1 enabled to give no-compromise web experience and much more great hardware features to compete with Apple iPad and Apple iPad 2.

RIM also let The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) join them and bring their talent to the BlackBerry PlayBook and future BlackBerry smartphones.

TAT is renowned for their innovative mobile user interface (UI) designs and has a long history of working with mobile and embedded technology. TAT focuses on delivering great user experiences, from a design, technology, and usability perspective. Their design technology is used today in a variety of industries including the consumer electronics and automotive sectors. Examples of TAT’s UI designs and concepts can be viewed on their web site at www.tat.se.

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Some of the features like intense multi-tasking, Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR apps supportive. stereo speakers, enterprise ready also makes BlackBerry PlayBook to compete with its rivals.

The BlackBerry PlayBook have 3 ports – HDMI-out, mini-USB port and magnetic charging port. The mini-USB is still a mystery what compatibilities it got but according the motherboard BlackBerry PlayBook running on, OMAP4430 chipset by Texas Instrument, shows the it does have USB On-The-Go (OTG). If RIM does not put limitations on the USB OTG though it can connect any USB device like CD-Burner, Smart-card reader, External HDD, etc. Once the RIM developer team were on Twitter and answering the followers questions asked to them. One of them asked about the USB OTG compatibility and the response was, ”USB Host support will not be available at launch. We are investigating adding this in a future release.” <https://twitter.com/BlackBerryDev/status/50258020038488064> This will be true Tablet PC replacing laptops at certain extent.

BlackBerry PlayBook contains Imagination Technologies’ POWERVR™ SGX540 graphics core which matches with Samsung Galaxy, iPhone 4, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV.

It gets more and more new features as we get closer to the launching date of this RIM’s first Professional grade Tablet. As recently RIM’s expanded App Ecosystem to benefit for customers and developers, to support Android apps. This is extremely great news for BlackBerry users and Android developers that BlackBerry PlayBook will able to run Android apps which are thousands of apps in the Android Market. Android apps won’t come from Android Marketplace itself, but rather Android developers will simply have to repackage, code sign and submit their BlackBerry Java and Android apps to BlackBerry App World from where users will be able to download the apps.

The BlackBerry PlayBook will be available in Best Buy, Best Buy Mobile, Best Buy Canada and Future Shop stores April 19th in the following models and price points:

 

• 16GB Wi-Fi, $499

• 32GB Wi-Fi, $599

• 64GB Wi-Fi, $699

Ultra portable, super convenient

Height: 5.1? / 130mm

Width: 7.6? / 194mm

Depth: 0.4? / 10mm

Weight: 0.9 lbs / 425g

7? LCD display, 1024 x 600 screen resolution Multi-touch capacitive screen

Professional grade performance

Full computing power in a tablet format

1 GHz dual-core processor

1 GB RAM

Symmetric multi-processing

Web without limits

Games, media, apps and everything the real Internet offers

Full Adobe® Flash® 10.1 enabled

Built-in support for HTML 5

No-compromise rendering of text, graphics and video

Best-in-class media

3 MP high-definition forward-facing camera

5 MP high-definition rear-facing camera

Codec support for superior media playback, creation and video calling

1080p HD video; H.264, MPEG4, WMV HDMI video output Micro USB and Micro HDMI ports

Video calling

Crystal clear high resolution display

Dual video cameras

Built for business

Out-of-the-box compatibility with BlackBerry® Enterprise Server

Seamless pairing for a secure window into your BlackBerry® smartphone

Corporate data accessSecure and manageable

BlackBerry Tablet OS

Powerful, user-friendly QNX technology: It’s what the World Wide Web runs on

Multi-processing for true multitasking

Rich application ecosystem

Rapid development environment