With the mobile climate increasing more rapidly, there is a greater variety of tablets for consumers to choose from. RIM is trying to win the consumers & business crowd over as the comeback kid starting with this 2.0 OS update for its tablet and then BlackBerry 10. RIM’s tablet launched last April and we reviewed it and found many key things MIA. Now that the PlayBook has received its long-awaited update, we decided to go through the tablet with a magnifying glass to see if the new tricks added were worth the wait. Let’s go in for a close look shall we.
What makes the 2.0 update a big deal is addition of some key features the PlayBook was missing upon its launch among other things. Finally added was the tablet’s native email, contacts, & calendar apps to use without needing a BlackBerry smartphone. Email within the Messages app gives users text formatting abilities like color, font, & alignment along with support for multiple accounts. The Messages app acts also acts as central hub for all of your communication needs by adding Twitter DMs, LinkedIn, & Facebook Messages along with your email messages. Giving you an Android Honeycomb-like visual interface which works well on the PlayBook’s 7inch frame.
The Contacts app works with the accounts you synced to the tablet displaying all of your email and social media contacts in a great yet familiar multiple-pane interface. This app shows Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & email contacts along with birthdays & scheduled events that work hand-in-hand with the Calendar app. You can easily drag-and-drop events into your calendar as it is well-designed look & feel. Both apps are welcomed with arms wide-open.
The BlackBerry Bridge app has been updated to give BlackBerry device owners remote controlled navigation for the PlayBook. Paired via Bluetooth, BlackBerry Remote can be used as mouse or keyboard as well as it has a presentation mode for PowerPoint slides. The Remote also works with select Android tablets, PCs, and others as they made sure BlackBerry owners weren’t the only ones having fun.
Added to the Doc To Go suite of apps is Print To Go, an app that allows you to send docs from your PC to your PlayBook wirelessly. In order to use this, you must have the software added to the PC you plan on sending the file(s) from. So you are not actually able to print from this app sort of a quick-fix rather than emailing yourself the file.
The PlayBook’s keyboard has been slightly resized a little smaller but still offers comfortable two-handed typing experience. But the biggest change to the keyboard is prediction and auto-correction which works as well as RIM physical keyboard. Good job on that part RIM.
Throughout the entire OS, RIM made sure speed up and beef up the many areas of the software like the browser, the ability to create folders on the Home page, the addition of Android app support, and an overall sense of stability to it. It is still far from perfect but greatly improved from what it once was. Hopefully the next big update can launch before BlackBerry 10 is announced.
First and foremost RIM has yet to provide a great ecosystem for users to actually enjoy on the PlayBook. Even with the Android App Player, good apps are hard to come by if not hard to find. Even the good apps for BlackBerry smartphones aren’t available for the tablet because of the two different platforms (BB6/7 & QNX). You do have second-rate services like Kobo books, the 7digital music store, and the newly added video store but it just doesn’t cut it. I know they courting developers to make apps by offering up a free PlayBook but there may have to be more of an incentive.
I am quite sure there is a technical issue involved in not putting BlackBerry’s proprietary messaging service BBM on the PlayBook. There has to be because there is absolutely no reason for this not to have it. For those of you with a BB you can use yours via the Bridge app but for everyone else, you are just fresh out of luck. Apple was able to implement its iMessage to the iPhone, iPad, and now the Mac in a better amount of time. This is a prime example of you guys dropping the ball and continuing to lose the battle for the consumer’s loyalty.
Ideally this update should have arrived no later than last summer rather than nearly one year later. There are still two main factors preventing this from being a worthy tablet competitor: native BBM and a better app selection. RIM really has to get more developers involved if they plan on actually selling this before even thinking about mass-producing another tablet. The PlayBook has Angry Birds and Cut The Rope available but extremely-priced compared to other platforms. Definitely not attractive for consumers, not one bit. Don’t get me wrong though, the PlayBook still has great features that are greatly executed. The PlayBook still is the only tablet to offer the full web in the browser, packs great sound with its dual stereo speakers, maintains the blinking LED notification alert BlackBerry users have grown to love, BlackBerry owners can use it as a bigger extension of their phone using Bluetooth -powered Bridge app, to name a few. But for what it can’t still do, definitely limits usage after checking email and browsing the web. All-in-all, the PlayBook’s new update makes the tablet feel more whole but still not yet complete.
For a tablet nearly one year old, I personally couldn’t recommend consumers to buy the PlayBook unless they can find a deal under $200. I’m pointing interested consumers towards the way of the Kindle Fire where Amazon has plenty of what RIM is missing: ecosystem. Hardware-wise it is literally the same device but its the software where things get distinctive. It is definitely money better spent than with RIM with more to offer.
