Blackberry Playbook might run Android apps

RIM's been hyping AIR apps and web apps for the PlayBook for a while now, but there's a chance much bigger things are in the works: BGR says the company wants to add in Java compatibility for legacy BlackBerry apps, and that among other options it's considering using the Dalvik virtual machine found in Android to get there. That makes a lot of sense -- Dalvik is one of the most advanced Java(ish) virtual machines out there, and it's open-source, so RIM could conceivably take it and tweak it to work with existing BlackBerry apps, which are built in Java. Clever, clever.

But that's not all: BGR goes on to speculate that using Dalvik will also allow the PlayBook and future QNX devices to straight-up run regular Android apps, which is obviously a much bigger deal than simply using the same virtual machine. Exactly how or why BGR's making that leap is unclear, since running Android apps on the PlayBook would require porting much more than just Dalvik, but it's out there. In fact, it's been out there since December 7, when Fortune picked up a note from Gleacher & Company analyst Mark McKechnie suggesting that RIM was planning to offer Android compatibility, so we're curious if this rumor's just taking another trip through the internet meat grinder. Honestly, our bet is that RIM is far too proud to offer Android compatibility and that it's just investigating Dalvik as a Java environment, but we'd love to be proven wrong -- we'll see what happens.

Playbook battery life

Blackberry Playbook battery life

Hey, can everyone please stop talking about the iPad? RIM's been skirting around Apple's tablet, saying only that its upcoming PlayBook slate would have "comparable" battery life, but now it's dropped all pretense and called the iPad out by name. Specifically, the Canadian company's senior business marketing VP Jeff McDowell has promised that the PlayBook will offer "equal or greater" battery endurance to Apple's device, while using a smaller cell size. The latter part isn't hard to achieve, considering Apple filled most of its slate's innards with Li-Pol juice packs, but the promise of matching its autonomy from the wall socket is a big claim to make. Many people consider that to be among the iPad's foremost strengths, so RIM is surely aiming high by pledging to not only match it, but potentially better it. The PlayBook we saw in person wasn't quite up to that level yet, but there's still time until that March launch for RIM to turn bold words into a beautiful reality.

Blackberry Balance details are known

If you're champing at the bit to separate your work life and personal life into two distinct, impenetrable entities, RIM's got your back: it turns out that the Balance product announced a few days ago will be available in just a couple months' time. In a recent chat with Retuers, the company's senior VP of business and platform marketing revealed that Balance is already in testing with carriers ahead of a wide-scale launch -- and furthermore, it'll be available on the upcoming PlayBook as well. As a refresher, Balance seeks to let you do all your personal stuff on your BlackBerry while still giving the IT suits in your office unfettered access to the secure stuff -- corporate email and the like -- which means you can carry a single device (as long as you're okay with that one device being a BlackBerry) where you might have previously carried two. Of course, if you've got a phone and a PlayBook, we suppose you'll have two devices anyhow -- but regardless, at least you'll be able to Facebook your face off without corporate security getting in the way.

BlackBerry® Tablet OS announcements

With the release of the beta version of the BlackBerry® WebWorks™ SDK, developers can now build BlackBerry® WebWorks™ applications for both the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet and BlackBerry® smartphone platforms!
The release of the updated Adobe® AIR® SDK for the BlackBerry Tablet OS will enable developers to create custom loading screens for their applications and leverage some of the updated look and feel for the native components.
We announced an extension to the free BlackBerry PlayBook tablet offer, presenting WebWorks developers with the opportunity to participate and providing additional time for Adobe AIR developers to finish their applications worldwide.

RIM exec talks PlayBook, App World, QNX on phones, and more

While we wait for the PlayBook to released in its WiFi- and WiMAX-equipped forms over the next few months, RIM's taking every opportunity it can to talk about the platform -- and the latest comes from an interview between FierceDeveloper and the company's veep of developer relations, Tyler Lessard, who played a prominent role at BlackBerry DevCon '10 a while back where the PlayBook was first announced. When asked about RIM's decision to partner up with Sprint and deliver a WiMAX version first before looking at bigger carriers with more broadly-used technologies, Lessard says that they "were really excited about was Sprint's interest and excitement in coming to the table and working with us on a product like that" -- which we take as code for either "they paid us the most" or "no one else bit." Either way, interesting verbiage to say the least -- though he does say that there are other versions in the pipe.

On App World, Lessard notes that BlackBerry's third-party app platform has taken in some 5,000 apps in the last couple months alone -- not a big number, necessarily, until you consider that they're only up to 17,000 total, so they're definitely seeing some nice growth percentages there. Turning the attention to the perennial question of when QNX will come to smartphones, he basically echoes a sentiment first shared by bossman Lazaridis back at D: Dive Into Mobile: dual-core processors are key, so the new platform won't filter down until the hardware gets beefier. He says that "we really want to make sure we don't back-step from that and offer a degraded experience because hardware is not ready or the performance isn't there," which is arguably odd wording considering that BlackBerry 6 is already well behind the curve -- how much worse could QNX on a single-core 1GHz-plus processor really be?

BlackBerry Playbook Tablet Accessories Announcement (CES 2011)

CES 2011: Ryan Bidan Q&A

New videos from CES2011

Here is a couple of videos of the new Blackberry Playbook straight out of CES 2011: