RIM By The Book: An Inside Look At BlackBerry PlayBook

RIM BlackBerry PlayBook

RIM is looking to take the tablet market by storm with the launch of the BlackBerry PlayBook, the smartphone mainstay's answer to the Apple iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

RIM is promising to deliver a healthy dose of mobile capabilities in its touch-screen tablet contender, and this week guaranteed that the BlackBerry PlayBook price will be in the sub-$500 range, besting its chief rival the Apple iPad.

As the RIM BlackBerry PlayBook gets ready to take the market by storm, he's an inside look at BlackBerry's upcoming tablet.

First Quarter Launch

The RIM BlackBerry PlayBook is expected to be widely available come the first quarter of 2011. RIM first showed off its touch-screen tablet back in September.

Size And Weight

Where Apple's iPad packs in a 9.7-inch display, RIM is taking the scaled down approach with the BlackBerry PlayBook, which features a 7-inch 1024 x 600 multi-touch capacitive display. The Google Android-based Samsung Galaxy Tab also boasts a 7-inch screen.

All told, the RIM BlackBerry PlayBook clocks in at 5.1 inches by 7.6 inches by 0.4 inches and weighs 0.9 pounds.

Packing Power

The RIM BlackBerry PlayBook ties in a dual-core 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor, 1 GB of RAM and symmetric multi-processing. It also features a USB port.

On The Web

The RIM BlackBerry PlayBook touch-screen tablet is an Internet powerhouse. It offers a rich Web capabilities for games, media and apps and supports full Adobe Flash 10.1 and HTML 5 to ensure all text, graphics and video works.

Connectivity

The BlackBerry PlayBook offers Wi-Fi connectivity and Bluetooth capabilities. Cellular 3G connectivity, however, is accessed through BlackBerry smartphone pairing.

Camera And Video

The RIM BlackBerry PlayBook features real-time video conferencing via dual HD cameras (a 3 MP forward-facing and 5 MP rear-facing), an HD display and stereo sound.

It offers codec support for media playback, creation and video calling and offers 1080p HD video and H.264, MPEG4, WMV HDMI video output. It also supports Micro USB and Micro HDMI.

A New OS

The BlackBerry PlayBook touch-screen tablet ties in a new BlackBerry Tablet OS powered by QNX, which the company said offers true multitasking, meaning users can watch a movie in one window, surf the web in another and look at photos in another, without having to close out of each application.

Apps

It's all about the apps, right? On the application front, the new BlackBerry Tablet OS offers a rich development environment and access to RIM's BlackBerry App World. It also supports a host of other development platforms including POSIX OS, SMP, Open GL, BlackBerry 6, WebKit, Adobe Flash, Java and Adobe Mobile AIR.

Enterprise Access

And carrying on BlackBerry's legacy of enterprise-friendliness, the PlayBook offers compatibility with BlackBerry Enterprise Server, pairing into BlackBerry smartphones, corporate data access and the same security and manageability as BlackBerry's smartphone line.

The BlackBerry PlayBook pairs with BlackBerry smartphones via Bluetooth to give users access to push technology; email, calendar, BlackBerry Messenger, tasks and documents; and other BlackBerry capabilities.