Blackberry Playbook Review
RIM is on the process of a major transition currently. Though there have been heaps of improvement to their PDA phones over the past few years, and with their recent 6.1 OS looking to take things even further, the conventional Blackberry OS is hitting a peak of ripeness, where RIM’s only way out is to start with something innovative. For other company’s such as HTC, Motorola, LG and Samsung, Google’s Android OS has been the saving and the much needed fresh commencement that has enabled them to compete against Apple’s iOS. Now, RIM has decided to do it in their own way.
‘Playbook’ sounds something like a thing used in some sporting event, and this is the most recent and unique rival to the iPad 2. This is RIM’s latest attempt at consumer relevance; a tablet that runs in its core, one of the most hardcore and industry friendly operating systems that are known to mankind. Yes, the OS is the QNX and the hardware is nothing but the Blackberry Playbook. Of course, it is going to be enterprise friendly, remember it is a blackberry after all, and it is definitely out there to conquer the tablet world, following the footsteps of the company’s phones, that has over the years, filled the pockets of the corporate executives and has managed to create lots of BBM addicts around the world.
Overview:
Now, we will give you a brief idea on what the Blackberry Playbook device actually offers. In a gist, it is quite a serious tablet, when compared to its main rival offerings from Google and Apple. It is definitely a stark exit from the more iPad resembling Motorla Xoom. That said, it does have a few games, but most of the highlight features will prove to be boring for the usual consumers. For instance, it is great at PowerPoint presentations, and has the required security features to save the dismal sales figures of the last quarter from falling into the wrong hands. While the feature is not too interesting, it sure is useful. PlayBook gets additional cool points for being swift and agile on a dual core 1GHz processor.
In addition to this, there is the seven inch 1200 x 600 pixels resolution display, a 3MP camera on the fascia and a 5MP rear camera, a typical gyroscope, GPS Sensors and accelerometer that makes this tablet extra cool. Intriguing or flat boring, it is RIM’s 7”, Flash featuring, as well as 3G lacking tablet with quite a sophisticated exterior. Other features such as multitasking, file storage capability, support for HDMI connection for 1080p videos playback along with a slicker interface make it a very interesting variant. The bad news is that, the entire experience is not that great to pose any real threats to iPad 2, Xoom, and has almost got it wrong when compared to Samsung Galaxy Tab.
Design:
Good-looks, Durable, Sturdy:
The Blackberry Playbook is black, with angular edges and dark styling. Only the chrome logo of the brand name ‘Blackberry’ adds some flare, which is subtly embossed below the display on the front. It sports a cool metal chassis, which is slightly rubberised, the edges square off and there is no flex whatsoever. Its small form factor along with dark colouring makes the tablets far less obvious than its rivals, which makes a part of its under-stated charm.
As we just mentioned, the Blackberry Playbook Tablet is developed to be enterprise friendly, and this means, at dimensions of 130 x194 mm (H x W), the tablet is small enough to be held with one arm and slipped into a laptop bag’s side pouch, and carry it around all day to all site meetings and stuff. The perfect tablet size has been a hot debate, but having a slightly smaller form factor makes it perfectly portable. The small display does the movies look less than thrilling, and not much space left for the more complex apps. Like most of the other leading apps, the PlayBook too feels much bulkier than its actual weight of 425 grams. The main reason might be because of its solid design construction, feeling quite rigid as well as durable; something like, you can simply drop and not create a scratch. It is easy to grip and looks incredibly luminous and bright.
Display:
It is worth mentioning that the Blackberry PlayBook has got a remarkably bright and clear Screen. There is no doubt in the fact that the WSVGA display has marvel of a resolution of 1200 x 600 pixels, rivaling the tablet giant Apple iPad 2. Some of the apt words describing the Blackberry Playbook are, ‘bright’, ‘clear’, ‘responsive’ and ‘colourful’. It also has some excellent viewing angles. When compared side by side with the Xoom and iPad 2, the PlayBook’s display is much clearer, complements to its smaller size and higher resolution. The small screen also means that there is not too much of a room for full tablet apps. For instance, if at all the playbook supported say, a flight tracking app, then the 7” display will be a bit cramped if you are looking to get some flight information on one side and a map view on the right.
Touch-Sensitive Bezel:
The bezel around the display is quite good, it looks almost like a picture frame. Most of you may not be aware that it is also touch sensitive, you can swipe up from bottom of the bezel and it minimized an app for you; this action will actually raise the app icons and placed the window above them. Just swipe from left to right, and you will be able to see open apps and get to move between them and when you swipe from the top bezel down to witness the settings for each os the apps. But, note that some apps do not have any settings whatsoever. Taking a closer look, we found a stereo speaker grills that had been cut into either side of the glass.
Buttons and Slots:
Apart from the Micro USB port (more about which we will say more), there is micro HDMI, as well as a proprietary three prong charging connector. Otherwise, there is the standard power button, volume up and down and also play and pause buttons. It should also be mentioned here that these buttons are extremely small and very hard to spot. In fact, the power button is so tiny that you have to look at it, tilt you finger and press in the right way. In addition to this, it is placed right at the centre top of the tablet, exactly where you fingers likely do not go more often. As much crazy as this sounds, it makes the worst part of the hardware; it is hugely frustrating, and though you will be able to turn on the display by swiping from bezel to bezel, there is no other way than the power button to disable it.
Interface:
Trying to say that QNX Operating System of PlayBook is a revolution might be an over-statement. It is more like an iteration, to be more specific, iteration of the Palm webOS with some feathers taken out of the Windows 7, with a dash of iPad 2. For instances, gestures like you have to swipe to insert apps in a Window is like that in Palm OS. Similar to the iPad and Xoom, the Playbook has employed quite a smart interface paradigm that is gesture based as well as logical. For instance, just swipe to move around the screen, press the app icons to start them, pinch out to zoom in and pinch in to zoom-in. Similar to iPad, you will be able to press and hold down on an app icon to move it, and click over a tiny trash icon to delete it. Swiping works quite well and the QNX interface is very responsive. Overall, if you had previously used an Apple touch-sensitive gadget then you will feel right at home with the Playbook; the QNX is highly usable and easy to learn too.
It is very much evident that RIM was aiming for something really high while designing this Operating System, as it seems to be highly intelligent. The multitasking feature (more about which we will see soon), cannot be recommended enough. It is great to be recording a video and swipe towards left and play games, and then just swipe back to find out that the video is still recording. While the PlayBook does not have support for copy and paste, the interface for this actually pretty simple. Just give an elongated press on an email ID or text portion until the copy-paste window comes up. Then, all that has to be done is, copy the particular selection and paste. We found that this works better than iPad.
Having said that, we have something to grudge too; for starters, the interface tends to take into consideration a great deal of information behalf of the user. You may even end up wondering if the app has any settings at all. One of the other major usability issues we had with the PlayBook is that, it does not have a Home Button. So, you will have to swipe to see the app list and also, the apps that are currently running in a window. As a necessity for the design, it works fine, but the iPad users who had decided to make a switch-over will definitely miss the Home button.
Features:
The insides:
Texas Instrument’s dual core 1GHz processor and the 1GB RAM offers some real muscle to the playbook. With these very capable hardware inside, the tablet runs most of the apps swift and smooth. Processor is a dual core TI OMAP that has been used to the fullest by the QNX OS. This OS is definitely an efficient and bullet-proof OS powering the entire thing. Being backed up by 1GB RAM as well as storage capacities of 16GB, 32GB and 64 GB, it turns out to be a speed monster and the Graphics are handled by a PowerVR design.
Easy sharing:
While the Blackberry playbook does not have support for external storage, it does sport a micro USB port, which can be used to connect the tablet to you system. Once that is done, just configure the tablet so that it is capable of sharing files via WiFi, which means you get to copy files to and from the tablet without the need to connect. The process of configuring this option turned out to be extremely simple. Just enable the WiFi sharing, install the Blackberry device manager driver and open the Network section that can be found in My Computer, or the SMB on a Mac.
Blackberry Bridge:
The Blackberry Bridge proves to be the home of one of the most confusing usability flaws. Basically, what this feature does is that, the Playbook will be able to connect to your Blackberry phone via Bluetooth from about 200 feet away. Once the connection is made, you will be able to view the contacts, check mails and even open tasks and notes. The reasoning for this is quite sound, as this simply means that it is just one less device to manage in IT. All your mail and contacts are quite secure because, in fact, they are not placed in the PlayBook at all. However, the consumers will still be able to use the browser for email, and RIM has thoughtfully placed icons that have links to these services.
The main issue here is that, not everybody has a Blackberry, or just that you may not take one with you. This will also prove to be quite confusing for the novice users, and we also have the question if it is secure at all. As soon as connect to your phone and open a mail, the email can be copied and saved locally. The Bridge also seems to be quite sluggish, while every other app opened, almost just then and there, the email client takes about three to five seconds every time, irrespective of number of other apps running.
Apps:
Though the Blackberry playbook lacks any of the third party apps that flood the other Android and Apple tablets, this one does show some real promising signs.
Basic apps:
The available selection of apps on the Playbook includes a music player, a Kobo e-book app that enables purchase and reading of eBooks, Bing Maps that does not do any turn-by-turn navigation, a clock, a YouTube, a weather app, an app for taking voice notes, Adobe PDF Reader, the game Need for Speed and also links to the webmail services such as Facebook, Twitter and Hotmail shortcuts.
Office friendly:
RIM has included viewers for PowerPoint, Excel and Word files in Playbook Tablet. Unfortunately, you will not be able to edit the docs, but you do get to open and play slideshows. As far as the productivity apps are concerned, they are integrated into the Blackberry Bridge System. This means, when you get a mail with attached word document, it can be opened from the mail itself.
Third-party Apps:
As we mentioned just now, the availability of third party apps on the Playbook is pathetic. You do not even get Skype client, or none of the common apps like the ones for checking flight status, no official or Twitter apps, there is no sign of anything from Google at all and there are some occasional games and business apps. However, it is also to be noted that there does exist some minor exceptions. The Adobe Connect App’s job is to connect to a web conferencing portal in order to collaborate on docs and video chat too. On testing, the app was not able to connect to our account, though we were able to achieve this from a system.
Games:
As far as games are concerned, there are a couple of good options like the ‘Bubble Birds’ which is a puzzle game like Tetris, and there is Tetris itself. Need for Speed looked quite smooth, and surprisingly, the controls for steering are extremely reliable.
The so-called App World on Blackberry is not exactly a great deal of success. Though there are a few apps available, they are of poor quality. If the PlayBook is looking for success, it will definitely need more apps.
Blackberry Desktop Manager:
The Blackberry Desktop Manager works well with the Playbook that allows you to make backups of your device. The backups include application data, settings and media. You will also be able to sync over music, pictures and videos from your system. We are pretty sure that once the core apps hit the market, you will be able to back them up too. An appreciable thing here is that, you get to continually use the PlayBook while the files are on the way of syncing.
Multitasking:
The Playbook has powerful multi-tasking capabilities, that is, where you will be able to run a video in one window and play games in another window, while both of the apps are running at the same time; the Blackberry playbook is first of its kind mainstream tablet. Just like the Motorola Xoom, the dual-core processor is capable of handling more than one task and hands over the processing to open apps. We were able to have a game running and at the same time, shoot a HD video using a Camera App. You will be able to change in-between two apps or view both of them at the same time. When you choose to watch HD videos together with some other app, then the audio keeps playing, but on the video part, there is just a blank screen. Multitasking provided on the Playbook is not a gimmick for swiping open apps; because, as and when an app loads, you will be able to close it, or just start an app, go back to home screen, commence another app, and then go back to the first app. Overall, it has a robust next generation tablet feel.
Browsing:
Some of the premature reports about the playbook claimed that it is crash prone and had issues with basic browsing, particularly with multiple tabs open. However, we hardly had any real issues with the latest OS version 1.0.1.1710, which is a mandatory update. Even with about six websites, with an email client open, and it hardly had any sort of slowdown.
The combo interface of Apple, Palm and Android interface might cause some confusion. For instance, in the browser, you can swipe down to find tabs, and when one is added, there will be buttons for new pages, similar to iPad and Palm, but again, you will be able to see open tabs like on the Android 3.0 gadgets.
The browser has support for Adobe Flash and, it did work well on a number of sites we tested it on. however, there were a few issues with sites that block access from tablets, like Hulu. And, the more Flash intensive sites such as Games Radar were a little but slow in loading, but eventually got up and running.
Multimedia Support:
The media support offered on the Blackberry PlayBook, is quite unpredictable. You will find a music store offered by 7 Digital, which did have all the albums we searched for, and that included the latest release ‘Kings of Leon’.
The Playbook has support for most of the common video formats such as WMV, H.264 and MPEG4. However, you will not find anything called Video store, and that is where Samsung’s Galaxy Tab takes over PlayBook. However, Playbook did make up for this, as it allows you add videos over WiFi that you have downloaded over web.
Since the Playbook is also equipped with a HDMI-out port, when connected using a micro-HDMI cable, the tablet mirrors on the big screen. You can just swipe through the apps, play some games and just show off your HD movies. Unlike its rival, Xoom, the movie playback when connected through HDMI was quite smooth, and it did not pause or stutter.
Camera:
When shown first in CES, the Playbook seemed to be having some really powerful front and rear cameras. However, the results of the final product were mixed. The videos shot using the Playbook tablet was a little blurry and not so colourful. The photos taken using the rear camera were much sharper and vibrant, but iPad 2 seemed better. The colours were lack lustre and washed out pictures were common. The smaller size of the playbook makes it simple to take quick photos and it will help with the common blurred image that is caused as a result of larger tablets moving too easily while taking photos. In the lowly lit conditions, the tablet created some undue noise that might be because of the lens that works well only is the brightly lit rooms and outside conditions too.
Blackberry Playbook’s camera cannot be relied any more than the other tablets. The camera interface is just simple enough and provides some basic options like image stabilisation, shooting mode for 16:9 aspect ratio and also a sport setting for the action shots.
Audio Quality:
The quality of the speaker is pretty good. While playing a sample HD video, we found the video to be quite rich in audio, and it was distinct too. However, when we played a few numbers from the album that we bought online, the speakers tended to sound a little muffled. But, when we connected to the device using a headphone, that solved the issue, and the audio sounded much better.
Battery:
The battery life of the Blackberry Playbook is not anything amazing. On continuous playback of videos and music, the device managed to last only for six hours. However, with everyday use such as occasional checking of mails and web browsing, the Playbook lasts for nine hours on a single charge.
Value:
At around £300 for a 16GB model, the Blackberry playbook costs about the same as an entry level 16GB Apple iPad 2.
Blackberry Playbook was officially announced last September, and the long awaited tablet went on sale on 19th April in US, but is expected to hit the shelves in UK only in June.
Verdict:
We have become big features of its multitasking features, and if the bridging feature is further expanded, the Playbook can also turn out to be as revolutionary as the iPad. Just the thought of bridging to your CRM data or accounting app, everything without even adding another security layer is exciting. We really hope RIM does some talking with its developers, to whom it is given a free Playbook if they created an app for it, and just take out the device from being this ‘niche’ tablet. If, in the next few months, RIM manages to achieve this and bring in apps such as Skype and Facebook, Playbook has some real big hope. Overall, as far as the Playbook is concerned, we have to only wait and see.
RIM Blackberry Playbook Tablet – Technical Specification Table
| Manufacturer | RIM |
| Model Name | Blackberry Playbook |
| Device type | Tablet |
| Dimensions (H x W x D) | 130 x 194 x 10 mm |
| Weight | Weight |
| Colour | Black |
| Display | 7″ LCD display |
| Display resolution | 1024 x 600 High resolution |
| Display features | WSVGA, capacitive screen with 4-finger multi-touch and gesture support |
| Capacities available | 16GB, 32GB and 64GB |
| Processor | 1 GHz dual-core processor |
| Cameras | 3 MP 1080p HD forward-facing camera 5 MP 1080p HD rear-facing camera |
| Camera features | Crystal clear high resolution display Dual video cameras |
| Sensors | Accelerometer, 6-axis motion sensing (gyroscope) and digital compass (magnetometer) |
| microSD card | No |
| Supported audio formats | MP3, AAC, WMA |
| Supported video formats | 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV |
| TV | HDMI out |
| OS | BlackBerry Tablet OS, powered by QNX technology Supports POSIX OS, SMP, Open GL, WebKit, Adobe Flash and Adobe Mobile AIR |
| Apps | App World |
| Wireless | Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR |
| Support | Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL, Java |
| GPS | Yes |
| Browser options | With the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, you get access to the full web, not a scaled down mobile version. Games, media, apps and all the rich content the real Internet has to offer Full Adobe® Flash® 10.1 enabled Built-in support for HTML 5 No-compromise rendering of text, graphics and video |
| Features | email, calendar, address book and task list, Documents To Go and BBM, BlackBerry Bridge |
| Battery | 5300mAh |
| Battery Life | Nine hours |
| Connectivity | microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts |
| Warranty | One year |