10/21/2011 11:41:00 PM
kakadiya Hitesh
The Wi-Fi-only BlackBerry PlayBook comes in three storage capacities—16GB ($499), 32GB ($599), and 64GB ($699). The PlayBook is priced identically to the Wi-Fi-only Apple iPad 2 for the same storage capacities. Currently there's no version with cellular service, though BlackBerry users can use their smartphones as hotspots for the tablet at no extra charge. RIM has announced a 4G PlayBook that's scheduled to launch this summer, along with LTE and HSPA+ versions that will be available later this year. Sprint has confirmed it will carry the WiMAX 4G model, and Verizon and AT&T are widely rumored to pick up the LTE and HSPA+ models respectively.
Design
A very good-looking, well-built tablet, the 14.4-ounce, 5.1-by-7.6-by-0.4-inch BlackBerry PlayBook features a black frame and contour and feels comfortable in hand. Its 7-inch screen has a resolution of 1,024 by 600 pixels, which is lower than the iPad 2's 9.7-inch touch-screen LCD, but since it's a smaller display, it actually seems sharper. One thing you won't find is a Home button, like on the iPad. To get back to the Main screen, you just need to sweep your finger up from the right corner of the display. The back panel features the BlackBerry logo and houses a 5-megapixel camera—far higher resolution than the rear-facing lens on the iPad 2, but comparable to the Motorola Xoom's rear camera. The 3-megapixel front-facing camera sits above the screen, and blows away the VGA-quality lens on the iPad 2 and is a slight improvement over the Xoom's 2-MP front lens.
A very good-looking, well-built tablet, the 14.4-ounce, 5.1-by-7.6-by-0.4-inch BlackBerry PlayBook features a black frame and contour and feels comfortable in hand. Its 7-inch screen has a resolution of 1,024 by 600 pixels, which is lower than the iPad 2's 9.7-inch touch-screen LCD, but since it's a smaller display, it actually seems sharper. One thing you won't find is a Home button, like on the iPad. To get back to the Main screen, you just need to sweep your finger up from the right corner of the display. The back panel features the BlackBerry logo and houses a 5-megapixel camera—far higher resolution than the rear-facing lens on the iPad 2, but comparable to the Motorola Xoom's rear camera. The 3-megapixel front-facing camera sits above the screen, and blows away the VGA-quality lens on the iPad 2 and is a slight improvement over the Xoom's 2-MP front lens.
The bottom panel houses a micro HDMI output, a micro USB connector, and a magnetic charging port similar to those on Apple's MacBooks (it works with an optional dock accessory, but the included charging/sync cable is micro USB). The headphone jack is up on the top panel along with Volume controls and the Power button. Internal stereo speakers project sound through thin slits on either side of the display—they can get quite loud for a modestly sized device. There are no included earphones, but the tablet does ship with a screen-cleaning cloth and a protective carrying pouch. The tablet supports 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.
The Power button is a bit of an issue on the PlayBook. It is tiny and recessed just enough that it's difficult to press. Of our two review units, we finally determined that one, on which the button became jammed, was actually defective. But the button is still tough to use on our non-defective PlayBook. It's not necessarily a reason not to buy the tablet, but is a notable and surprising shortcoming from a seasoned hardware manufacturer.
Internally, the PlayBook is armed with a new Texas Instruments processor. The OMAP4430 is a dual-core, 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 chip, like the Nvidia Tegra 2 found in the Motorola Xoom. The graphics processor TI includes is different than Nvidia's, however—it's Imagination's PowerVR SGX540. The whole chip set utilizes a dual-channel memory controller rather than the single channel controller Nvidia employs.
BlackBerry Tablet OS
The user interface for the PlayBook is quite impressive. Not only does it run smoothly, but the graphics are simple and visually interesting. Even better, the layout is very sensible. It's not quite as dead simple to navigate and organize as the Apple iOS UI, but it's easy to figure out where your apps are and makes more sense than the overly busy Honeycomb Home screen. You can navigate them by four categories: All, Favorites, Media, and Games. A dock at the lower portion of the screen expands to fill the screen with the tap of an arrow, showing you more than the six apps the minimized dock displays.
The user interface for the PlayBook is quite impressive. Not only does it run smoothly, but the graphics are simple and visually interesting. Even better, the layout is very sensible. It's not quite as dead simple to navigate and organize as the Apple iOS UI, but it's easy to figure out where your apps are and makes more sense than the overly busy Honeycomb Home screen. You can navigate them by four categories: All, Favorites, Media, and Games. A dock at the lower portion of the screen expands to fill the screen with the tap of an arrow, showing you more than the six apps the minimized dock displays.
It's a bit of a bear to set up, but we were able to get the wireless sharing feature up and running after some tinkering. The PlayBook can share files and wirelessly download files from computers on the same Wi-Fi network. The set up process on the tablet is simple and requires very little effort—just some quick adjustments in the Storage and Sharing menu. It's getting the computers to cooperate that can be frustrating. We managed to get the PlayBook to show up with relative ease on a Windows 7 machine, but some earlier tries on an iMac and a Windows XP system were not initially successful. The recognition process between tablet and PC took a few minutes in our tests. Regardless, once it was set, we were able to move files from computers on the network to the PlayBook wirelessly—this is a step above the iPad 2's wireless sharing abilities, which allows for streaming between iTunes libraries and devices on the same network, but not actual file transfer.
Multitasking on the PlayBook is good in theory, but weak in implementation. The view you get of open apps is similar to that on the Xoom—meaning, you typically will get a "live" view of what you were most recently doing in each app. However, RIM made a fairly crucial mistake here—the apps are all actually running, it seems, even when in the background. Not only is that a suck on the battery, but it hobbles the tablet's basic functional abilities. On the Xoom, you can have plenty of apps "running," but they really go into a sleep-but-quick-to-wake mode whenever you're not actually using them, thus saving power and not taxing the processor. The PlayBook keeps everything running until you get a notification in the form of a flashing red signal in the upper left corner of the screen: "System is running low on memory—please close some applications." We've never seen a tablet ask that of us, and it goes against the very concept of multitasking. The best example of how this is not a good thing: Say you're playing a video in an app and then you minimize it to go to another app, it doesn't stop playing. You will hear the audio in the background as you are performing other tasks. For music, that makes sense, but not video. You must pause the video or close the app to fix this, but the general point is, not only can several apps not be open simultaneously, but the ones that are open, are actually running and using up the tablet's processing and power when they needn't be.
There are some settings to control how apps behave when in the background—this is one of the only items in the General settings menu—but they don't seem to remedy the issue. For instance, Paused mode, which pauses every app in the background, should solve the problem, but while it did seem to make the warning messages cease, app performance (particularly the browser's) seemed to suffer when apps were un-paused for use.
And then, there are the bugs. Sometimes, your computer will not recognize the PlayBook when connected via USB cable—a problem you never encounter with the iPad. Sometimes, it shows up as a drive on your computer just as it should. Sometimes, the PlayBook can't find a wireless network when it's in a room filled with them, despite having been connected to one moments earlier. The bugginess is annoying, but that's what updates are for, so it's likely that most of these types of issues will eventually be addressed.
Posted in: Tablet
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