Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Blackberry Playbook announced

Today, at the BlackBerry Developer Conference (DevCon), RIM CEO Mike Laziridis announced the BlackBerry Playbook. The PlayBook has a 7-inch hi-res widescreen display, is 9.7 mm thick, supports Flash 10.1 with hardware accelerated video, HTML 5, 1080p video, has non-proprietary HDMI and USB connections, full-HD front and rear-facing camera, support for dual-displays (with use of HDMI cable), will be able to connect with BlackBerry Enterprise Servers out of the box via Bluetooth secure pairing to BlackBerry. The device will have a 1 GHz dual-core processor (with symmetrical multiprocessing capabilities) and 1 GB RAM. The device OS, which is developed by QNX, is POSIX based and will get a native SDK which supports Adobe Air, Flash, and OpenGL 2.0.

The PlayBook will be able to act as a second, larger screen for a BlackBerry phone, through a secure short-range wireless link. When the connection is severed - perhaps because the user walks away with the phone - no sensitive data like company e-mails are left on the tablet. Outside of Wi-Fi range, it will be able to pick up cellular service to access the Web by linking to a BlackBerry.
But the tablet will also work as a standalone device. RIM co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie said its goal is to present the full Web experience of a computer, including the ability to display Flash, Adobe Systems Inc.'s format for video and interactive material on the Web. That means the tablet will be less dependent on third-party applications or "apps," Balsillie said.
"I don't need to download a YouTube app if I've got YouTube on the Web," said Balsillie, who leads the company along with co-CEO Mike Lazaridis.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has resisted allowing Flash on any of the company's mobile gadgets, arguing the software has too many bugs and sucks too much battery life.

Blackberry Playbook preview: