RIM Launches PlayBook: a Tablet-Sized BlackBerry?

For months now, online rumours have been suggesting that Canadian firm RIM would launch its own tablet, and at its annual developers' event, the makers of the BlackBerry officially unveiled the PlayBook. To say the very least, this 7'' touchscreen device has some surprising features.

We don't need to introduce the Cortex A9 processor, a member of the ARM family which has been cropping up in new mobile devices for the past few weeks. The PlayBook gets a 1 GHz dual-core version.


A business tablet?

At least one of the persistent rumours is true: users will be able to tether their PlayBooks with a BlackBerry. The icons in Engadget's screenshots confirm that this can take place, as well as indicating the presence of both Bluetooth and WiFi connections, but no mobile data option; a 3G, or even 4G version will be available later.

To convince professional users to make the switch, the tablet runs none other than the QNX OS, which is very widespread in embedded applications and specialises in handling real-time systems. It's also been confirmed that you can use it to edit documents directly, almost certainly including those produced by MS Office.

Multimedia not forgotten

It would have been a shame to leave the power of the dual-core processor just for work, so the PlayBook can also play 1080p video, with support for H.264, MPEG, DivX and WMV, and it also has two cameras of its own. The first, at the front, has a 3 Megapixel sensor, while the one at the back has 5 Megapixels. You can enjoy your recordings on the 7'', 1024 x 600 pixel screen or use the micro-HDMI output to watch them on a TV.

For getting online, the browser is based on the WebKit engine, and support for Flash 10.1, Air, OpenGL and Java has been confirmed.

Let's finish with its vital statistics: 130 x 193 x 9.7 mm, and 400 g on the scales. There'll be more information, including details of availability, soon. For the time being, though, we're glad to see RIM ploughing its own furrow and doing something slightly different.


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