First
announced in September, the
BlackBerry PlayBook, Research in Motion’s (RIM) ambitious entrant into the tablet market, is now set to hit stores on April 19 at $499.
Mashable has been testing out the device over the past week and also talked to Mike Lazaridis, the founder and co-CEO of RIM, about PlayBook, what it means for his company, and the opportunity he sees in a space that’s getting more crowded by the day.
Read on for the pros, cons and our view as to whether or not PlayBook stands a chance against iPad and the slew of Android options already available.
Build, Form Factor and Screen
Out of the box, the PlayBook feels sturdy and compact despite weighing in at just 425 grams. The front of the device is glass and there are no buttons. The rear is a soft rubberized plastic that feels good in the hand. The sides have that same rubberized coating, which makes us feel more secure about potential drops — and that’s before adding any of the optional accessories.
Unlike the
Xoom and the upcoming
Acer Icnoia Tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook breaks away from the 10-inch form factor popularized by the
iPad, opting instead for a 7-inch device, making it much more akin to the original
Samsung Galaxy Tab.
Last October, Steve Jobs famously called 7-inch tablets “
tweeners,” stating that the devices are too large to be a smartphone and too small for a tablet. Generally speaking, we feel that 7-inch screens can still make for a great ereader (like the Kindle), but don’t quite make sense in a tablet.
The PlayBook is interesting, however, because even though it does have only a 7-inch screen, its resolution of 1024×600 makes it feel — at least in landscape mode — very similar to an iPad. Further, in landscape, the text is clear, graphics are bright and the keyboard feels good to the touch.
The problem, at least for us, was using the device in portrait mode. Reading text on most websites was almost impossible without significant zooming, and the keyboard was uncomfortable even in short periods of time. Unfortunately, using the device solely in landscape mode presents other challenges, like typing long emails or documents because the keyboard takes up a significant portion of the screen real estate. Switching to portrait mode allows more visible text, but that text is smaller and the keyboard is difficult for even small hands to navigate.
Beyond the size – which we ultimately do find to be less desirable than iPad and larger Android tablets — the screen on the device is WSVGA rather than IPS (as seen on the iPad). That said, colors still look good in portrait and landscape mode from a variety of different angles, and the touch screen itself is capacitive and very responsive. The accelerometer works in all directions and is fast.
User Experience
We have to give RIM credit for making its UI both familiar and original at the same time. The interface is easy to pick up, but it contains some of its own subtle touches that make it stand out. Compared to prior offerings from RIM, BlackBerry OS 6.0 probably comes closest in terms of experience, but it is still a far cry away from what RIM has crafted with the PlayBook (which bases its OS on QNX).
Perhaps the biggest differentiator with the PlayBook is the way the entire screen is used. The black bezel on the top and bottom of the screen isn’t just for looks — it’s touch sensitive too. Rather than using a home button like the iPad or an on-screen button like Honeycomb, swiping a finger up from the bottom will minimize an app and show the home screen. The menu or status bar is accessible by swiping down from the top of the screen or diagonally from the top left of the screen. Swiping from the lower left or right side allows users to quickly switch between open apps.
Accessing notifications — one of the best features of BlackBerry OS — is as simple as just tapping on them in the status bar. Notifications can be dismissed by swiping from left to right or accessed by tapping on the notification. The system is unobtrusive and it works.
We also really like the way the PlayBook handles multitasking. Switching between open apps feels much more fluid than on the iPad. Lazaridis showed us what he calls “a presenters dream” – switching from a presentation to a video that’s already loaded in the background – and the experience is indeed quite seamless. The PlayBook also excels in the more common situation where you want to reference something from a website or a document in an e-mail.
That said, for switching between more task-oriented apps, the PlayBook doesn’t offer any major benefits over the iOS version of multi-tasking. Having continuous access to certain applications — like a Twitter or IM client — from the status menu in any application would give the PlayBook an advantage here. At this stage, however, multi-tasking is still more like fast-app switching.
On the whole, we quite like the UI. It feels more finished than Honeycomb and has a consistent look and feel.
Apps
It’s no mystery that one prominent reason BlackBerry has lost favor in recent years to both Apple and Google is because of its relative lack of apps (or more to the point, lack of quality apps).
With the PlayBook, RIM is taking an interesting — if risky — multi-faceted approach to platform development. In addition to being able to run apps built in Adobe Air, the PlayBook will support older
BlackBerry OS apps and (though not at launch) Android 2.x apps via a virtual machine.
The PlayBook ships with a variety of pre-installed apps, including Docs to Go (an app for opening, creating and editing Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents),
Need for Speed Undercover and Kobo Reader.
Need for Speed Undercover is a fantastic example of what type of games can be played on the PlayBook. The game is a dead-ringer for PS2/Xbox versions of the
Need for Speed series and the accelerometer works great with the game.
Unfortunately, the web browser and some multimedia apps aside, that pretty much covers all of the truly native PlayBook apps. The apps in the App World are sparse and the rest of the applications on the home screen are really just web shortcuts. While Lazaridis pointed out in our interview that the 3,000+ apps at launch is the most ever for a tablet, that’s moot given how many apps now exist for PlayBook’s rivals.
Another downside to consider is that in order to access the BlackBerry mail client, BlackBerry Messenger and an address book, users need to connect their BlackBerry devices to the PlayBook through a Bridge mode that allows the PlayBook to access data without actually storing any data on the device itself. While great for security, it’s rather inconvenient.
Moreover, at this time, non-BlackBerry owners will need to use a web client for receiving and sending email. For a company like RIM that has made its mark by understanding messaging, not having a native messaging client available without bridging to another BlackBerry is a bitter pill to swallow.
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While there’s no question that the iPhone experience can be greatly improved by a few choice accessories — a cool speaker dock and a snazzy case, for example — there are companies out there that have taken the concept to the extreme.
