RIM BlackBerry PlayBook: A Promising Tablet, but With Many Rough Edges

To say that Research in Motion's BlackBerry PlayBook is a survey in contrasts is an understatement. Aft extensively testing a PlayBook ($500 for 16GB of memory board, $600 for a 32GB rendering, and $700 for 64GB) that was running non-quite-final software, I'm impressed by its spacious size and fresh navigation, but I found the tablet's sometimes naive native software and natural selection of apps frustrating.

In some respects, the PlayBook is the most impressive tablet I've seen to date. Its approach to navigating among open apps is a joy; I was able to move among them faster than on whatsoever other tablet. Simply native apps like the PlayBook's browser have disappointing glitches, and you won't get much assist from downloading third gear-political party apps–only 3000 volition cost available at launch (compared with the 65,000 available for the iPad), and I still haven't seen many marquee name calling among them.

The first thing you'll notice active the PlayBook is that it's compact and light. Like the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the PlayBook has a 7-edge in reveal, significantly smaller than the 9.7-edge iPad 2. At 7.6 inches open, 5.1 inches high and just 0.4 inches thick, the PlayBook is small enough to comfortably fit into a generous coat air pocket, and yet provides enough screen real estate to feel like a significant melioration over a regulation smartphone screen. Its astuteness falls smack in betwixt the Galaxy Tab and the iPad 2, at 0.1 inch thinner than the Galaxy Tab, and simply 0.06 inch thicker than the urbane iPad 2.

And its weighting? Just under 1 hammer (exactly 0.94 pounds, according to the PCWorld Labs' scale), which makes it 28 per centum lighter than the 1.3-pound iPad 2. By comparison with other tablets I've used, the PlayBook mat up downright featherweight. It was by far the easiest to hold, whether you consumption two custody or one. The PlayBook feels solidly built, with a velvety-silky, textured back. I DO wish the edges were more rounded (they are squared and angular), but that didn't trouble oneself me too much.

While you hindquarters use the PlayBook in portrait mode, it's designed to work best when held horizontally. In that landscape preference, the PlayBook's 3-megapixel front-cladding camera sits centered over the top of the covert, with several buttons flush along the abut: the power push button (which is miniscule, efficacious, and difficult to wont), volume buttons, and a wordless push button that doubles as a play/pause clit. At back, centralised along the cover edge, sits the 5-megapixel camera (which has no trashy). The stereo speakers are front-facing, and centered at either side of the screen; my small hands ne'er came close to blocking the speakers, though those with large work force might have a different go through. (The audio outturn from the PlayBook's speakers is the best I've heard notwithstandin from a tablet.)

On the bottom of the pill are three ports: HDMI Micro, microUSB, and a magnetic fast charger connection. The PlayBook has triplet different charging options: slow, fast, and really fast. Unlike most tablets, the PlayBook can charge fully off of a standard PC USB port (at 5V and 500mA), only it'll take a spell. The process goes almost quaternion times more cursorily, according to Brim, if you wont the included microUSB fence in charger. If that's non fast sufficient, you tail ricoche for either of two $70 options: the Rapid Charging Pod or the Rapid Travel Charger. The speedy charging options restore the PlayBook battery nearly twice as fast as the wall battery charger, RIM says.

How the RIM BlackBerry PlayBook lots equal to its competitors.

Inside the PlayBook, you'll find a competitive set of components. The pill is powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of memory. This initial iteration connects to 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, but lacks any mobile broadband connection; for that, you'll have to wait until late summertime, when RIM will dismissal 4G LTE and WiMax versions of the PlayBook. The unit I tested came with 32GB of on-plug-in storage; as mentioned, it is also obtainable in 16GB and 64GB. You'll need to choose your capacity carefully, since, comparable the Apple iPad, the PlayBook has no computer memory expansion carte expansion slot.

Interface and Multitasking

The PlayBook runs Flange's new BlackBerry Tablet OS, based on software from RIM supplementary QNX, which builds operating systems for everything from in-dash cable car appliances to electric guitars. This OS has a fresh look and flavor, and its touchscreen navigation concepts are novel and innovational, albeit it with a a few bumps.

Let's start with the elemental navigation. The PlayBook has no nursing home button. Instead, touch controls are integrated into the bezel, and you voyage nigh with swipes that originate outside the shield, or move down operating room finished towards the bezel.

The gestures work otherwise depending along the context. For example, if the PlayBook is drowsing, you stool wake it by swiping up from the tail bezel into the screen. Once you're on the home screen, a swipe up will let on a screenful of app icons. If you're in an app, swiping up will close the program.

The PlayBook's home screen is two-chambered into three components: A narrow status bar heavenward top; a large naiant seafaring pane in the center that shows thumbnail images of your unconcealed apps; and along the bottom, the archetypal row of the app menus. These menus are by default divided into folders: All, Favorites, Media, and Games. The status bar at top gave uncomparable-tap approach to Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, assault and battery life percentage, and general settings info.

Within the pilotage Ze, you can swipe from side to side to move among open apps–an easy way to switch among tasks. When you're not connected the home screen, you can e'er reveal the status bar by swiping down from the corners. And when you're in an app that uses the keyboard, you can swipe up from the bottom bezel to reveal the keyboard.

In Video: Lip's BlackBerry PlayBook is a Work in Contrasts

While it sounds complex, the navigation system of rules is intuitive and quickly becomes second nature. The PlayBook is as wel church music: Screens refresh quickly, and transitions and scrolling are snappy. On the entire, Lip has come high with a simple and elegant go up to navigation that is easier and more flexible than the iPad 2's iOS 4.3. One thing I miss: the bustling widgets happening Android 3.0 that keep you updated with bits of info without having to open an app.

Individual apps sometimes experience additional menu options that terminate be revealed aside dragging up OR down from the bezel. The problem is that those options aren't always obvious. Built-in apps like the Browser, the music histrion, and the television player have no visible cues alerting you to additional menus or navigation options. It was alone through experiment, for instance, that I found that if you swipe down from the transcend bezel, you'll see a convenient horizontal scroll of thumbnails of your videos, so you seat easy hop to another choice in your library.

The BlackBerry's notifications are unobtrusive: Messages appear in the upper right corner to tell you that the electric battery is jetting low, for case.

Media and File Handling

The PlayBook's handling of video, music, and pictures is a assorted bag. It does whatever things extraordinarily well: For example, the Bone put up great power two different graphics activities simultaneously, so you can output 1080p telecasting via HDMI to a TV and soundless surf the Web on the PlayBook–with nary degradation of epitome quality. Flash video played fine inside a Entanglement page, though occasionally YouTube or Hulu videos wouldn't resize decent to fill the screen. If you leave an app that's in the middle of playacting a television, then getting even later, the PlayBook instantly resumes the video at just where you left off. That's impressive given how klutzy other tablets are therein situation.

You can bargain music connected a PlayBook through 7digital, the comparable DRM-free memory you can shop via a BlackBerry phone. RIM plans to offer a video store, simply it's not ready yet.

This tablet had no release with performin WMV, AVI, Beaver State even H.264 MP4 files I shot on my iPhone. The telecasting player is spry and excitable to navigate, just information technology won't let you store videos in folders of your prime; instead, you must use the three default folders: Every last videos, Downloaded videos, and Recorded videos.

Images looked large–crisp and sharpened, with terrific vividness–in the Pictures app. But this app is very basic: It has a slideshow mode, but no transition or playback options. It doesn't show image properties like EXIF information. And vertical images appear as small versions presented in horizontal mode; Lip said it will add that capability in a future day update.

RIM makes information technology moderately easy to get smug onto the Playbook. You have to install an app on your desktop, and use it to transfer content to the device wirelessly (the tablet acts like a wireless demanding aim), or use the app's guided sync and transfer options. Impressively, it grabbed music from my iTunes subroutine library, skipping over some songs lone because those tracks were protected by digital rights management. The music player that's built into the BlackBerry Tablet OS looks fine and operates smoothly, though its layout took a little acquiring wont to, and information technology wasn't as easy as I'd like to habitus playlists on the fly.

Web Browsing

I like the fact that BlackBerry Tablet OS browser supports Twinkle, but I was otherwise disappointed with its uneven behavior. The accompany says some of these issues testament be fixed in a future update, but the stumbles ready-made it hard to love the have.

The browser lets you save a JPEG file to a Downloads folder that's ready to hand via the web browser; however, I couldn't open the JPEGs I downloaded on the device. I had similar problems with some Word docs and PDFs that I downloaded, too, though other files saved and open just close in the preinstalled apps (Adobe Reader for PDFs; and the Microsoft Office-congruous Word To Go, Tack To Fling, Slideshow To Go). Stranger still, tapping on a file didn't systematically invoke the action to save it–though when I did get the chance to save a file, the PlayBook also gave Maine the chance to rename it on the spot. Other thwarting: the Download folder didn't consistently continue a history of the downloaded files; without that, or a common file away browser then I could rummage on the tablet myself, those files matt-up lost to the ether.

I liked how I had a superior of viewing bookmarks A a visual icon, or as a text list that shows the URL. As with the relief of PlayBook's interface, there's a bezel gesture: Weigh down from the pass to reveal and flick among open tabs, ADHD a new tab, check the limited browser options, and go to the Downloads screen.

The Network browser is as good a place as whatever to mention the on-screen keyboard. The BlackBerry Tablet OS doesn't have autocorrection; what you type, proper surgery wrong, is what you get. And its keyboard felt incommodious–not surprising, given that the PlayBook has a 7-inch screen. A bigger issue is that the nam placement is off-kilter, too. The rows of keys are non staggered as QWERTY keyboards well-nig always are, and that threw off my tactual sensation typing. I like the fact that the PlayBook shows both soda pop-improving letters (as with iOS) and a blue tint atomic number 3 visual indicators of which cardinal you pressed.

Apps

RIM stocks the PlayBook with a solid complement of preinstalled apps, but it has some leading light omissions. As already mentioned, it has a Browser, Gallery, music player, the AppWorld app store, and the 7digital Music Store. Too on board: A cooked YouTube app, a Podcast subscription app, a voice recorder, Bing Maps for navigation, a calculator, weather condition, and Slacker Radio (for capturing photos and videos).

Several games are preinstalled, including the NFS Undercover dynamic game, and Tetris. But in NFS Undercover, the accelerometer seemed to equal too sensitive, and it would prematurely rotate the screen–another thing RIM aforementioned its working happening adjusting.

The strongest software on board is the Adobe Reader and the three productivity apps that stem from Flange's acquisition of DatavViz. These apps–Word To Go, Sheet To Go, and Slideshow To Go–provide interoperability with Microsoft Office documents, and allow document editing and creation. I found them abundant sufficiency to use, though I was frustrated by how they stored files.

The PlayBook doesn't include some calendar, contact, or electronic mail apps. The idea is that you won't keep any of that data along the tablet itself. Instead, you'll apply a feature film called BlackBerry Bridge to distich your PlayBook with a Blackberry bush call up. That way, you can view your BlackBerry Messenger e-post, contacts, and chats on the PlayBook's large screen. When you decouple the tab and the phone, the Messenger data disappears from the PlayBook–an element of security that mightiness frustrate consumers, but should appeal to corporate IS honchos who desire to limit the spread of sensitive information. The Bridge feature wasn't fully enabled in time for this review; I'll report hindmost once I can test it in full.

A a substitute for a indigene chain mail app, Brim offers four app icons–one each for Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and AOL Mail service–that, misleadingly, redirect to those Network-based chain mail sites in the Web browser rather than to an installed mail app. Dependent on the divine service you use, you will get just about full functionality via the Web browser. (For instance, the Gmail app doesn't rent you attach to files, unless you manually go to the "basic Hypertext markup language" surgery "Desktop" variant of the site.) And unfortunately, RIM's Twitter and Facebook offerings are similarly just shortcuts to the browser–no backup for an actual app experience.

RIM says it will launch the PlayBook with 3000 apps in its AppWorld salt away. Unfortunately, in the prelaunch testing period, none of the apps I downloaded particularly impressed Maine–some appeared to be simple, almost State-like in their design. RIM says the PlayBook will be able-bodied to run Android 2.x apps (only significantly, non apps for Android 3.0, the tablet version of Google's OS), and only those Android apps that are oversubscribed via its AppWorld store; but the Mechanical man Player emulator that will enable this feat, on with the imitator that will run BlackBerry telephone set apps, North Korean won't be available until later this summer. Right instantly, I have to aver that the PlayBook lacks compelling apps to complement its (mostly) compelling hardware and mobile OS.

Bottom Line

The BlackBerry PlayBook gets a raft right, but it also feels selfsame more like a work in progress. Information technology could shine in the future, but for now it's affected by its limited app selection, software glitches, and choices in functionality or design that should limit the PlayBook's popularity among consumers. Businesspeople who already ride BlackBerry phones should esteem both the elbow room those phones wish interact with the Playbook and the collective-in security of the platform–and for that interview, those capabilities volition override some of the PlayBook's other weaknesses.