It is generally agreed that Apple’s Ipad is the flagship tablet in the market today. But good thing the product is being revamped and repackaged as the iPad 2, a lot of tablets have played catch-up and probably would have edged it out of the top spot.
The Motorola Xoom was featured on this site as one of the hottest tablets soon to be released. Another contender is the Playbook, a product from the stables of the manufacturers of the Blackberry brand.
The last one year has seen the market share and sales of the Blackberry plummet, no thanks to the Android OS backed gadgets. However, the company has decided to field the Playbook as a device that would probably revive the fortunes of the company.
It has the following enviable specs;
- 7-inch LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch and gesture support
- BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
- 1 GHz dual-core processor
- 1 GB RAM
- 16-64GB of storage
- Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD video recording
- Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
- Audio playback: MP3, AAC, WMA
- HDMI video output
- Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n
- Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
- Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
- Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL, Java
- Ultra thin and portable:
- Measures 5.1″x7.6″x0.4″ (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
- Weighs less than a pound (approximately 0.9 lb or 400g)
- RIM intends to also offer 3G and 4G models in the future.
Hands-on tests at the CES showed that thePlaybook was much snappier that most devices out there. I daresay that if RIM should consider a release of a 10.1 inch version, we may officially ask the Ipad to abdicate the throne in favour of the Playbook.
It is expected to be released very soon. There was, however, no mention of the pricing.
4 comments
Eyebeekay
‘The issue still bothers on
convergence. People want so many features on this device so that they would
not have to pay for a laptop.’
This issue of convergence. Well the requirements are so divergent that it is doubtful one can have a convergent device!
True Portability requires smal size. A 10′ device can not be described as portable. It is luggable!
Can I carrty a tablet to my ears to make a call?
Does a tablet have enough processing muscle to do serious computing?
Is the screen of a smartphone large enough to enjoy reading PDFs?
Looks to me like it is inevitable for us to have a full laptop / pc, a tablet and a smartphone.
None can truly effectively take the place of the other.
For me, I can skip the tablet and I feel a 4′ smartphone will somewhat play the role of a tablet (screen xter size is software addressable)., and battery life will be a plus.
Itend to think the sub-7-inch tablet will either kill the smartphone, or vice versa
A last thought – where can I take a 10′ tablet that I can n not take a netbook? I might as well flow with the netbook and not a severely crooked and underpowered tablet…
See newgadget.org/gadget-comparisons/netbook-vs-tablet-which-one-is-better/ for some views..
Wale Falade
The truth is, the tablet is largely a luxury device and not a necessity
Your summation is quite right, comparing the netbook to the tablet but you would agree that the tablet (even the 10 inch), though underpowered, is still more portable than the netbook.
Anyway, let’s just say the tablet is a big boy’s toy and until i find one that is ideal for me, i’ll keep on hunting, and maybe after using it for a couple of months, i will then wonder “why the hell i wasted my money”. Isnt that the story of the life of a gadget freak?
Eyebeekay
‘I daresay that if RIM should consider a release of a 10.1 inch version, we may officially ask the Ipad to abdicate the throne in favour of the Playbook.’
Now, I asked this question before: what is a tablet?
The absence of a physical keyboard from a NETBOOK?
And what is a netbook? If a ‘tablet’ has a diagonal display of over 10 inches, does it still qualify to be called a tablet?
Can we call a smartphone of over 4 inches display a tablet?
Dunno…..
Wale Falade
Hello Eyebeekay, i think i can summarise your opinion of a tablet as a device having less than a 10 inch?
The issue still bothers on convergence. People want so many features on this device so that they would not have to pay for a laptop.
Look at the trend; Dell with a swivel keyboard on their netbook that can transform it to a tablet. Asus has also unveiled a 10 inch tablet at the CES with slider keyboard. I believe there should be others out there too with such features.
The truth is, if convergence is the goal, a 7 inch tablet is not much more better than your 4 inch smartphone. You can achieve very little with a screen size that small.