The Blackberry Playbook has been talked about for months. Ever since its announcement last September many Blackberry users have been waiting the Canadian company to release a tablet to compete with the popular and super successful iPad. It felt like an eternity, but finally a definite release date of April 19th has been confirmed.
I have the original iPad and it’s a great device. The form factor, long battery life, and the vast of available apps is why the iPad as sold millions world wide. Even though the iPad has established itself in the tablet market why should someone who is looking for one consider a Blackberry Playbook?
Here are a few things to consider:
- Flash Support – Yes, that’s right the Playbook will be able to play all those flash animation on those websites you visit. If you want a desktop browser experience on a tablet then the Playbook is the device to get.
- QNX OS – QNX is a robust and powerful operating system. The potential with QNX is tremendous. The fact that the OS is in many systems in many industries for many decades speaks volumes about the effectiveness of it. RIM owns QNX and it represents its future not just for the tablet market, but for their phones as well. QNX on the Playbook has been developed for the tablet first whereas others were ported or modified from a phone OS.
- Android App Support – RIM just recently announced that they will be supporting Android 2.3 apps on the Playbook. That means it’ll instantly add thousands of apps into its portfolio. But a caveat is the lack of detail of how it will be handled. Will the apps just be emulated over a Java VM environment on the Playbook or do they mean that RIM will provide some kind of support to transfer existing Android apps to the Playbook without any major re-coding. Maybe someone can provide some more insight for me.
- 7″ Size – Yes it’s a smaller size, but it doesn’t mean it’s a disadvantage compared to other larger size tablets. When it comes to carrying a tablet around the 7″ inch size is much more suitable. With my iPad it rarely leaves my bed room let alone leaving the house.
If you’re in the market for a tablet device than you’re in luck. A slew of new devices will be released in the next several months from Samsung, HP, LG, HTC and others. The Blackberry Playbook will be one of them vying for your hard earned cash and to chip away the large chunk of market share that Apple’s iPad now holds. RIM knows it will need to knock this product out of the park, its future depends on it. With QNX in their future RIM will have what it takes to compete and beat it’s competitors. I hope the Playbook becomes a big success, not because I’m a fan of Blackberry but because it’s always nice to have competition. And we, the consumer, gets to benefit from it.