On September 27th, while most of us were in class, Research In Motion’s CEO, Mike Lazaridis, announced the release of their much anticipated tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook. The PlayBook is RIM’s take on a multitouch slate to contend with the Apple’s iPad. The iPad opened a new rapidly growing market and RIM wants a piece by creating a tablet that can do everything the iPad can and much more.
RIM made it clear that the PlayBook will flourish where the iPad could not by advertising the features the iPad is known to lack; these include, multitasking, Adobe Flash support, 2 cameras, light weight, 1080p video playback, html-5 support, 4G (models promised for the future), etc. What seems to be one of the most impressive aspects is how thin the tablet is. It is advertised as being the first tablet less than 1cm thick with the iPad being at 1.34cm thick. The main drawback from what is currently known about the PlayBook is the screen size which is 7 inches (17.78cm for anal metric lovers) which sits short of the iPad’s screen size of 9.7 inches (24.64cm).
It is suspected a smaller screen is used for two main purposes, the first being to increase the pixel density giving the illusion of displaying a better image in comparison to the iPad while, in fact, the resolution of PlayBook (1024×600) is slightly inferior to that of the iPad (1024×768). The second suspected purpose is to increase the battery life of the device. No information has been announced yet on the battery life of the PlayBook but it will have a hard time competing with the iPad’s 9-10 hours (non-standby) of battery life if it had screen of equal size.
If you are currently not getting an iPad and waiting for a PlayBook you will have to wait until early 2011 to get your hands on one. This does not seem to be very well thought out by RIM as many customers will not be sure if they should wait or not without first finding out if the tablet will cost them a pretty penny. To make it even worse, RIM will be missing the holiday shopping season when many customers will have a different tablet on their wish list.
It is ironic that Lazaridis referred to a product named PlayBook as the “the first professional tablet” but it seems RIM is aiming for the PlayBook to have the image of being both a fun and professional device. I have heard many complaints about the name of the tablet but it seems that bad names are common in the field of tablets (iPad…seriously?). A bad product name can develop a new image if the product is a hit as proven over and over again throughout history. As for now, I will go play with my Wii.
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