Blackberry Playbook

http://www.bgr.com/2011/06/27/googl...tured-by-samsung-possibly-dubbed-nexus-prime/

 

I find it odd that Samsung would manufacture a phone with OMAP4460 when they have their Exynos. Of course, it's not like if I ever understood business practices

 

couple of things.

Samsung LSI and Samsung CE are two totally different companies. There is also some suggestion that they can not produce sufficent volumes of the Exynos at least partly as a result of their manufacturing committment to Apple.

If there is any truth in indications I've seen that TI have a lead position on ice cream sandwich, then in reality they have no choice.

 

Just installed this iOS app which sends you notifications of various deals. One of them was for a PlayBook for $299.

Would be tempted if it was a 3G model with GPS.

But now, TouchPads will be dumped for fire sale prices too.

 

And not to mention the soon(?) available tegra3 based tablet's. I would love to have one of those if the price is right.

 

Dead Space is a nice showcase game for the PlayBook.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGCoCZOi1AE

 

Native SDK in closed beta. This is taking too long. Nice to see C/C++, OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0 and standard template library. Also good to see it uses the QNX Eclipse toolset, Momentix, rather than the Blackberry Eclipse plugins and whatever.

http://blogs.blackberry.com/2011/08/apply-native-sdk-closed-beta/

 

Playbook price cut by $200 in the US.

At $300 vs. 200 for the Kindle Fire, the Playbook seems to have better hardware: more storage, dual cameras, HDMI out. Not sure if the Fire has HDMI out, doesn't sound like it. Not sure if Playbook has GPS or if it was only on the 3G models that they never came out with.

But what is the software situation? Doesn't sound like the app. situation has improved that much and I haven't heard about the native email or the Android app. compatibility.

Maybe the lower price will spur sales and get Android ported over to it, though the QNX UI on the Playbook looks pretty good.

If these are fire-sale prices, then RIMM may not be planning to add features to the Playbook.

 

For up to ~$270, I'd find the Playbook a much better value than the Kindle Fire, if I could get honeycomb in it.


Regarding the software compatibility, RIM has said it won't support apps made with Android's SDK, only Java and Dalvik. It'll be a hit and miss either you can get the software you want or not.

 

Doesn't seem that way.

 

App situation is bad and they've missed all the promises they made for feature releases during the summer time frame. I'm not sure what's going on, but there's been little to no attention paid to the Playbook. Maybe they diverted all the QNX resources to the QNX phones.

 

There's a rumor that they are having problems getting BES working on QNX so that might be their highest priority.

They can't afford to stumble on the QNX phones whereas the Playbook now seems like a luxury that may turn out they couldn't afford.

 

Just think if they had released a QNX phone in april and how much worse that would have been. Launching the tablet first was the right move, but they still need to deliver on the phones.

 

Article on RIMM's mistakes with the Playbook and an overview of its history:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...?mod=WSJ_article_comments#articleTabs=article

It does say in there that RIMM denied it is halting Playbook production and says there will be a major software update for Playbooks in October.

 

Playbook OS 2.0

 

I'll admit it, although the Playbook is still seeing a fair bit of daily use in the family for browsing and flash games, and the form factor is just right, I've really been hoping for someone to Cyanogenmod it so I could switch to Android. I have zero faith in the way Blackberry wants to implement Android emulation.

 

Delayed until Feb.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Research-Motion-Continues-wscheats-3605541471.html?x=0

That should be right around when iPad 3 rolls in. RIM doesn't seem to be able to do anything right anymore.

 

Read that today. Disappointing.

 

Will they have new hardware? They're going to have to keep up with the SOCs which will be out by that time.

There is a WSJ article about the new VP of Developer Relations, supposedly got a bigger budget and they hired people in CA and the Far East, to reach out to developers in those places, to support the BBX platform.

Supposedly, most Blackberry app. developers had gathered around Waterloo, so it wasn't a broadly-based community.

 

Seems wishes may come true eventually, as the Playbook has been jailbroken.

Well, it's a start. Considering how closely related the Kindle Fire is, maybe Android on Playbook will benefit from efforts on that front.