Blackberry Playbook

Update now available.

Video Chat, BBM, Document Editing and Homescreen Bookmarks.

<edit> its 290 MB, so a fair bit bigger than the last update.

 

Blackberry World Keynote in progress (twitter feed):

http://crackberry.com/blackberry-world-2011-keynote-live-blog

Some highlights...

* Angry Birds coming.
*
* Native e-mail and PIM demoed and coming this summer
* Android app support demoed...each app installs as it's own icon...automatically launches the app player if it's not open. Full network connectivity and performance (on the apps they used) is good. The "option / menu" button on android hardware is mapped to the swipe down (menu) gesture on playbook...

 

I still haven't seen the bridge and messenger updates on my phone that are necessary to try out messenger on the playbook.

 

Try rebooting your phone (battery pull for sure). That usually refreshes the app world cache...

 

Yeah, I got it at lunch. Will check it out when I get home.

It'll be interesting to see how these partnerships with Microsoft and Facebook play out. The Facebook app is great, so with Facebook involved in that production it should only get better.

 

Ew. Rebooting a BB...that give one some time to kill

 

Some info on the native development kit. Hopefully it'll be here very soon.

http://crackberry.com/first-look-ho...emented-playbook-made-accessible-3rd-party-de

 

http://tablets-planet.com/2011/05/0...-10-inch-playbook-style-tablet-for-this-year/

10incher in time for the holidays ?

 

For me, the 7 inch size turned out to be "right". It's much more comfortable for me to use than 10 inch tablets...more portable.

More options are good of course...but I'm not sure I put too much stock in this particular rumor as far as timing goes. RIM is launching a new line of smartphones this summer / fall, and they still have the radio (3G/4G) versions of the 7 inch playbook to get out. And we all know they are focused on rounding out the software on the playbook, tweaking the O/S, getting the native SDK released, etc.

There really seems to be a lot of energy coming from Rim at this time, but I think it makes more sense for them to wait until next spring / summer to release "Playbook2"...either just a 10 inch variant of the current hardware, or a hardware refresh than includes both 7 and 10 inch form factors.

 

I put this in the Wars thread but it belongs here to...I spent some time playing with the Playbook at the airport between flights on my way to Germany yesterday. While I thought the size would be too small, it's actually quite nice. The OS is very snappy and feels like a streamlined webOS of sorts. Much easier to manipulate while standing/walking than my ipad 2...I want one, but then I'm a gadget geek...

 

I'm pretty happy with this thing. My laptop gets used a lot less. Once it has proper IM clients and a Netflix app, I won't be using my laptop much at all.

 

250,000 sold in first month.

Seems like there is a market for a 7" tablet.

 

Didn't Samsung claim higher numbers for the Galaxy Tab? But turned out a lot of it was still in the channel, not sold through.

This is suppose to be a business product yet the analyst is tracking retail numbers?

 

It's definitely sold at retail outlets.

 

It'll be interesting to see if the sales are sustained. Looks like RIM is playing up Flash capability in the TV commercials more than anything else, not so much the UI or the form factor.

Lately, it seems that the tablets which are getting the buzz on the web are the 10-inch ones. First it was the Xoom, then the Transformer for a few weeks. Now there seems to be some anticipation for the Galaxy 10.1.

I guess it all depends on usage expectations. If people want to take a tablet on the go, then 7-inch makes sense. But for use around the home or office, a 10-inch has obvious appeal. You would think the 7-inch products would make a better case if they're priced less than the 10-inch models, which are all now matching the iPad price.

It also seems that people are willing to concentrate on HW specs and design more than software now. So things like ports, thinness, keyboard docks, etc. are higher priorities than app. availability. But the presumption is probably that Android will get tablet app. support eventually.

 

there's 3 or 4 different commercials only one of them mentions flash (although) that is all they mention in the one ad. The latest ad is certainly focused on the Ui and the power as it shows a user flipping between a number of media apps with them all running.

 

Heh, FWIW, the best experience I've ever had for moving around the house was my 12" ToughBook with a resistive touchscreen and stylus. Ah, if only the failed Android smartbook market had used resistive touchscreens instead of a touchpad...

Oh, and I don't know if I said this yet, but I bought a Playbook a few weeks ago. Very happy with it - although interestingly my main complaint isn't so much the lack of apps as the relatively low polish for the ones that are there. Crashes, slow startup, no copy paste, etc... And then there's the retarded power button. Still a very nice machine and I'm glad I bought it. I'd give RIMM a good chance of beating Palm in the tablet market and creating the 3rd viable tablet OS (or maybe 4th including Windows 8).

 

Hmm, I'm only seeing one Playbook ad around here.

I FF through most commercials but caught the Playbook ad a few times.

 

and then there's the flash one and at least one other one that I've seen.

 

Joined the Playbook club myself yesterday. I actually got an imported US version as the device is yet to be officially released here in Singapore. Really like the form factor and the general solid feel of the device. I knew there'd still be a few quirks so I'm not overly critical. But I thought it was kinda funny how RIM's own app store said that 'this browser is not supported' the first time I logged on. That tiny power button is just silly. And I had to find someone with a Blackberry phone charger to be able to charge here at work as USB charging was so slow as to be practically useless.

On the upside though, browsing works pretty well, and that's mainly what it will be used for. I bought 2 ebooks on that Kobo thing without problems and downloaded a few games and things as well. My little girl spent about an hour with the piano app, which also meant the wife couldn't complain too much about this 'educational' purchase hehe.