The BlackBerry Playbook: A Sneak Preview From ABA TECHSHOW

On April 19 the new BlackBerry PlayBook will hit the shelves at 20,000 stores and couriers will be busy delivering the pre-orders. Thanks to my old technology friend John Olah (He had a great contact at RIM!), I had the opportunity to spend some time with a pre-release version of the PlayBook at ABA TECHSHOW this week. I was generally impressed with this device, but have some hesitations as well.

The PlayBook felt very solid in my hand. It is 1cm thick and the rubberized back and sides let you keep a good grip on it. I always feel I am going to drop my iPad2 because it is so thin and the aluminum back is slippery. The PlayBook weighs slightly less than a pound and is also much easier to hold in one hand.

With a 7 inch screen it is smaller and more portable than its larger iPad brethren. As an aging person with failing eyesight I do appreciate larger screens more often than I did in the past, but I really liked the portability the smaller size of the PlayBook gives you. I think this is a plus for the PlayBook as portability is important to a lot of people. Unfortunately, the PlayBook won’t fit into the breast pocket of a suit jacket (It is about 1cm too wide – a design flaw?) and it is a shade too big for a belt clip. It would fit into the hip pocket in a jacket or trench coat or a smaller purse.

The 1024×600 WSVGA capacitive LCD touch screen gives you video that is truly stunning – it had incredibly bright and sharp colours on quick moving scenes. The HDMI video output was equally impressive on a 48 inch SMART Board. You will be able to use a stylus on the screen and Bluetooth keyboards can be used with it as well.

The PlayBook has rear and front facing cameras which are, respectively, 5 and 3 megapixels. Both cameras can also record full 1080p video footage.

The PlayBook runs on an entirely new OS specifically designed for this device called the Blackberry Tablet OS. This new OS was based on the QNX operating system (a recent RIM purchase) and it will eventually be used on all BlackBerry devices. The PlayBook has a 1GHz dual-core processor and 1Gig of RAM. It was really fast and you can do true multitasking on it. I had 8 or 9 different applications running (including OS intensive web and media apps) and was able to switch between them easily and virtually instantly.

In many ways the screen interface of the PlayBook looks similar to that of the BlackBerry Torch. I found navigating the screen was easy and reasonably intuitive. It automatically orients to portrait or landscape as change the orientation of the device. Many of the icons are identical and most BlackBerry users would recognize most of them. You can slide groups of icons up and down and to the left and right, much as you do on an iPhone or iPad.

A single tap on an icon opens an application up. Open applications fill the entire screen. When they are in full screen mode, a downwards swipe across the top edge of the screen displays a dropdown box that contains menu items for that application – the menu items are not otherwise visible. I think this is a really great GUI feature as it makes maximum use of the limited available screen real estate. You can tell I am not a fan of the Microsoft ribbon. I hate wasted space on a screen.

A vertical swipe up across the bottom of edge of the PlayBook screen minimizes an open application. It only took about 10 minutes or so to get used to the new swiping motions. After minimizing an open application, you see a horizontal line of screenshots from all open applications. You can scroll these screenshots to the left or right and a single tap opens up the selected app. Switching between apps was very fast. Great to have true multitasking on this device.

I did visit the PlayBook App World but found only a few dozens apps there. I am told that as of April 19 there will be a few thousand apps available. Not an impressive number relative to what is available for other smart phones and tablets. However, I also understand that the PlayBook will run Android apps – good news as this means there are more than 150,000 other apps currently available for the PlayBook. Hopefully it won’t be too long before we see more apps that will use the full capabilities of the new Blackberry Tablet OS.

I understand battery life is 8-10 hours. The PlayBook has a whole array of sensors for mapping and gaming including GPS, Accelerometer, Gyroscope and a Digital Compass.

Unlike the iPad, the PlayBook will display Flash. While we could argue for at least an hour our whether Flash has a future – there are currently huge numbers of Flash-based sites that won’t be going anywhere soon and this gives the PlayBook one important and significant ability the iPad doesn’t have.

One last thing to comment on – and this one has me scratching my head a bit. To access your BlackBerry email, contacts and calendar you must pair the PlayBook with your BlackBerry. When the devices are in close proximity to each other they will securely connect with BlackBerry Bridge – a newly developed connection that has extra security to allow a secure pipe between the two devices.

When the devices are paired, you will be able to view emails, attachments, contacts and calendar entries from the BlackBerry on the PlayBook. The data for all this information will not reside on the PlayBook. Rather, it will be delivered to the PlayBook as emails are opened etc. When the two devices are separated from immediate proximity to each other, all information delivered to the PlayBook will be automatically wiped. Other things on the PlayBook will operate when it is not paired with a BlackBerry – you just won’t be able to access your BlackBerry email, contacts and calendar. There is a third-party app in development that will allow data to remain on the PlayBook. You could access web-based email and info via WiFi.

While the security of the BlackBerry is great – and one of the main reasons many law firms use BlackBerries and not iPhones and iPads – I’m not sure having two devices makes sense for most of us. Admittedly, different people will have different needs and desires and the “ultimate everything device” will vary in size and abilities based on personal preferences. I suppose having one data plan is better than two (although with the multi-media abilities of the PlayBook I suspect anyone using one will see their data usage go way up). No doubt, the extra security the PlayBook has will mean that many law firms that have avoided iPhones and iPads will consider using PlayBooks.

I really like my BlackBerry Torch because I find the touch-screen capability lets me review and delete emails more quickly and it makes it easier to browse websites (And look for a Bold with a touchscreen in the not to distant future). Because I can do more with my Torch, I find I am leaving my laptop behind more often than I did in the past. I am assuming the larger PlayBook screen will let me leave my laptop behind on even more occasions.

However, I’m not sure I really want to drag two devices. No doubt RIM could make a PlayBook just as secure as a BlackBerry. Playbooks that include 4G are coming later this year and these could operate as a phone. And while most of us probably don’t want to hold a PlayBook to our head to make a call, it seems to me that a wired or wireless ear-bud and mic would work fine here. Perhaps they haven’t had enough time to sort these features and some of these things will happen down the road.

The PlayBooks coming out next week are Wi-Fi only and come as an entry level 16GB model costing $499, or more expensive 32GB or 64GB versions priced at $599 and $699. Those prices match the comparable iPad 2 models.

I will be getting a PlayBook on April 19 and will provide an update of my experience with it in a few weeks.