Blackberry Playbook Review

The Blackberry Playbook will arrive in retail outlets on April 19.  This represents RIM's (Research In Motion) entry into the world of tablets.  Given that 2011 supposedly the year of the tablet, next week represents RIM's "15 minutes of fame".

The iPad

Last month, the iPad2 was released and received by lines at the Apple stores and limited quantity.  Apple is the king of hype management.  They have mastered the correct mix of marketing savy, quality, and fan loyalty.  There is no doubt that Apple products are synonymous with quality and they currently own the tablet market.

Apple, Android, and Fragmentation

Apple is intent on consistency.  Steve Jobs recently mocked the Android 'fragmentation' formed by having multiple operating systems on disparate hardware while embarking on their journey into the tablet world.  Android currently supports Gingerbread (the latest and greatest phone OS) and Honeycomb (tablet-based OS and next generation phone OS).  Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Apple is rolling out tablet-specific apps to look like they are made to run natively on the larger tablet screen.  If these apps are too 'wide' to run on an iPhone, then what sysonym for 'fragmentation' will Steve Jobs use to describe this phenomenon.

What is a Tablet?

Last year Apple rolled out the iPad and people scratched their heads not knowing where it would fit in in the world of smartphones and laptops.  The combination of Apple hype and willingness to accept whatever Apple gives to the consumer made the iPad a very surprising and immediately accepted technology niche.  After all, it wasn't until after the introduction of the iPad that we started hearing terms like 'post-PC era'.

Apple has certainly paved the road for tablet computing.  Apple had been developing the iPad for quite some time before it's rollout.  This means that Apple did not have market pressure to release in order to stay competitive within a market that was moving fast.  Prior to the iPad, the market did not even exist.

Here Comes the Rest

When it became apparent that tablet computing was gaining traction, it was just a matter of time for the others to follow.  Apple created an experience.  The competitors seem content to simply create performance.  Google makes the Android OS.  Different hardware manufacturers are responsible for creating the devices on which the OS runs.  Being tied to the same OS, these competing hardware manufacturers rely on different screen technology as well as their own home-baked Android overlays for differentiation.  These overlays present huge difficulties for Android updates to be distributed to consumers because they require the hardware manufacturers to modify their overlays to accommodate the new OS.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab was the first Android-based tablet to hit he market.  Samsung, using an OS designed for a candy-bar shaped phone, was quick to relesae the Galaxy Tab in time for last Christmas hoping to gain market position based on the time of year.  The Galaxy Tabs are now (5 months ago) discounted to bargain basement prices (and are still sitting on the shelves).  The Galaxy Tab had great hardware specs, but just didn't catch on.  Dell introduced the Streak which just plain stunk.  They're available at rock-bottom prices now as well.  Motorolla just introduced the Xoom which, from a hardware perspective is a very powerful device.  It was the first Android-based tablet rolled out with Honeycomb (built for tablets).  It is getting good reviews, but they had to deliver it without Flash support because it wasn't ready in the Honeycomb world yet.

Coming soon will be tablets by HP who bought Palm and thus now own the popular WebOS operating system.  Microsoft will soon be entering the tablet arena as well.

And Then There's The Playbook

And of course, on April 19th, the Blackberry Playbook will make its debut.  Apparently, the NDA between RIM and the review sites expired last night at exactly 9:00 PM because out of nowhere, full 'official' reviews of the Playbook were released.  RIM made the initial announcement concerning the Playbook back in September and there have been many media events in which RIM was showing off it's entry into the tablet space.

I won't go into great detail because there are so many articles describing features and functions of the Playbook all over the web.  RIM has been criticized as being a company who was relying too much on its past successes and not putting enough effort into playing catch-up with iOS and Android.  The Playbook runs an OS called Blackberry Tablet OS which is based on the QNX operating system that has been running embedded devices from 'smart' refrigerators to set-top cable boxes to automobile diagnostic equipment for years.  It is a very tight and efficient OS.  The Playbook is a 7" tablet (as compared to the 10" iPad) that has no buttons on the front, a very sharp, bright, and crisp display (in 16x9 format), and lots of goodies under the hood.  It is being described as a 'prefessional grade' tablet and, from the looks of it, seems pretty professional and solid (from it's dual core TI processor to the solidness of it's design).

Five 'Huge' Problems With The Playbook

The reviews that broke last night speak of the following issues:

1. No native apps for email, contacts, and calendar.
2. Wifi-only
3. Small screen size
4. Very small and hard-to-press power button (are you kidding me?)
5. Limited apps available.

There are probably more, but these are the five biggies that seem to be showing up everywhere.  I'll address them in order.  It should be noted, however, that the reviewers also noted that at least once during their short test period, the test units received software updates that corrected some of the problems they were reporting.  When you purchase a Playbook, the first thing it will ask you to do is run an upgrade.

Email, Contacts, and Calendar.

We're talking about RIM.  This is the company whose strength is messaging.  So why no native apps for it?  There are two reasons that I see.  First, if you own a Blackberry smartphone, you use an app called the Blackberry Bridge to connect your Playbook to the phone via a secure Bluetooth connection so that you can interact with your email, calendar, contacts, tasks, etc completely in sync with your smartphone.  The nice thing about the Bridge is that none of your personal data is ever stored on the Playbook itself.  This means that a company whose IT department supports the Blackberry phones does not need to support the Playbook for security reasons.  The second reason that there are no native PIM apps is that they are not finished.  If RIM were the first to market with a tablet, then they could set their own release schedule.  As it is, they are being criticized for not having this product available earlier!

Wifi-only

Patience is a virtue.  If you really need your tablet to include a 3G/4G radio, then you'll only have to wait until June or July.  Personally, my monthly cell phone bill is already large enough that I'm not hurrying to add a device that's going to cost me a lot extra to add to my plan for data usage.  The Playbook currently supports the Bridge (described above) for real-time PIM usage (if you currently have a Blackberry), Wifi connection (if you happen to be near a Wifi hotspot), and Bluetooth tethering.  The Bridge and tethering are separate applications.  If you do not have a Blackberry phone, but do have a smartphone capable of a Bluetooth connection and DUN modem communications (most phones out there now), then you can tether.  If you happen to get busted by your carrier for a huge spike in data usage via tethering, you can always just buy a tethering plan which is a lot cheaper than a data plan for a dedicated tablet device.

Small Screen Size

Maybe the iPad has not been around long enough for it to be an accepted wardrobe accessory, but I find it funny seeing people walking around looking at their iPad simply based on the size.  There are cool and nifty cases around, but it's still a 10" tablet.  The Playbook is 7", fits in the inside pocket of a jacket or a purse, and has a 16x9 apsect ratio making it ideal for HD viewing.  What I will agree with the reviewers about is that the smaller screen size is an issue when the keyboard pops up and (at 300 px high) takes up half the height of the Playbook in landscape mode.

Small Power Button

The button is too small.  It's recessed and hard to push.  I'm reading this all over the place.  The Playbook, as I mentioned earlier, has an OS that is based on QNX which is extremely efficient in terms of managing background tasks along with foreground tasks.  The Playbook has an extremely battery-efficient standby mode.  Unless you specifically power the Playbook down, you won't even need the power button.  a simple swipe gesture from the bottom bezzel to the top wakes it up.  So what's the big deal.

Believe it or Not, There's a Good Side

Now, having said all of that, I have to say that I really look forward to receiving my Playbook any time now.  Apple had it right.  They created an experience.  It's just not the experience that I'm looking for.  Android will become a great platform for tablets if the HTCs, Samsungs, Keoceras, LGs, Dells, etc don't eat each other in the process.  Recent articles and blogs state how Android is overtaking both Blackberry and Apple in the phone space.  This would be more accurately stated by saying that the slew of hardware manufacturers that make devices that run the Android OS and are battling to carve out a niche for themselves and are competing with each other have collectively taken the lead in sheer number of Andriod devices sold.  This also means that these same manufacturers will be more likely to leave consumers in the lurch when they release a new phone and abandon their existing customers in an effort to attract new ones.  In this regard, Apple, who has created an experience, has alow created both the hardware and the software.  This is the same approach being taken by RIM.

RIM is releasing a device that is technically rich and powerful that is capable of performing whatever tasks are required by the marketplace today and down the road.  The dual-core processors allow true multitasking.  The screen is beautiful, bright, and colorful (moreso than the iPad in my opinion).  The rear-facing 5mp and front facing 3mp cameras are very nice and capable of creating HD video.

Connectivity is awesome!  While you don't have iTunes to sync all of your media, you do have the Media Manager (bundled with the Blackberry Desktop Manager).  The big difference is that with the Playbook, you maintian a wifi connection between your Playbook and your PC/Laptop.  This means that you can be adding music to your Playbook when it's not even in the room.  And, because of the ability to sleep and be woken, a request from your PC/Laptop will automatically wake up the Playbook without your having to fiddle with the little power button.  Here is a cool little video from Crackberry showing off some cool things you can do with the Playbook.

The browser is amaxing.  It's a Webkit browser that is capable of rendering Flash content.  In other words, you can surf the web as you would on your home computer (assuming that your home computer had a monitor that was only 600px high ;)

Most people are knocking the device saying that it's not ready for primetime.  This is more a function of inverstor pressure and not the technology.  Personally, I can do everything that I'd want to do on a table (and then some) on a Blackberry Playbook.  I can't say the same for the others.  But, before the iPad, I never really thought about having a need for tablet computing.

Conclusion

The iPad is certainly a great device.  In my mind, however, it is not the end-all for tablet computing.  Without Apple, we would probably not be talking about tablets now.  But the niche has been established and Apple has it's heals dug in deep.  They've created my awareness of tablet computing.  But RIM has actually sparked my interest in owning one.  And now that there are a gazillion videos and reviews of the Playbook, I am confident that I know what I'm getting myself into.

The way technology advances, I still feel confident that I'll be able to love this device for at least a year, begin longing for a newer one in two, and have to go through this whole experience again shortly thereafter.  And I assume that, at that point, more of a review like this will be dealing with Microsoft as a viable tablet player as well.