BlackBerry PlayBook

“After months and months of anticipation, Research In Motion's debut tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook, is finally here. The good news is that the user interface for the new BlackBerry Tablet OS is beautiful, graceful, and operates with a simplicity that rivals that of the Apple iPad 2 and bests the Motorola Xoom's oft-cluttered screens. The bad news is that, at launch, there's a lot missing. First, there's no native e-mail support. The PlayBook also suffers from a dearth of compelling—or smooth-functioning—apps. Then there's the absence of should-be-standard features—why include a front-facing camera, but no video-chat app? Updates, RIM promises, will bring much of what's missing to the PlayBook in the near future. Throw in some better app selection, too, and the PlayBook may be worth revisiting down the road, but right now, it's unfinished.”

“We’ve gone through in explaining which devices excel in specific categories, but it’s still rather difficult to concretely say which one is ultimately the cream of the crop. Naturally, there’s a host of other factors that come into play that would make one more highly prized than the other, like pricing. Taking that into consideration, the two cellular enabled Android tablets currently sport no-contract price tags of $750 and up – making them super pricey! Chiming in at a more reasonable starting price of $500 for their base Wi-Fi only models, the iPad 2 and PlayBook offer plenty of bang for the buck, and if you want to add 3G connectivity to the iPad 2, it'd still be more affordable than the Honeycomb-rocking alternatives. In any event, there’s no denying we’ll still be hearing all four of these tablets in the coming months, especially when they’re setting the pace for all others to come out after them.”

“What RIM has done is widen the category, proving that a 7-inch tablet can be useful and offer up an experience as unique as the iPad’s.With that said, in its infancy, the unit still has some problems and our first PlayBook completely died. RIM was prompt to replace it and doesn’t believe the problem is widespread among launch units. Representatives have told me that a lot of these issues will be ironed out by June or July, which is when the app catalog will open to Java and Android apps and RIM will release native email and calendar apps. Coincidentally, it’s also when RIM plans to release 3G and 4G versions of the unit. If you don’t use Web-based email, it might be wise to hold off for a couple months.”

“It may be labeled version 2.0, but this is the operating system the Playbook should have shipped with. It’s relatively complete, mostly bug-free, and though it’s filled with plenty of oddities, quirks, and issues none are hugely problematic. The additions are smart ones, the new apps are mostly good (though real, useful Android support is still a pipe dream), and the operating system generally works really well. But unfortunately for RIM, the PlayBook doesn’t live in a vacuum, and in the months between PlayBook 1.0 and 2.0, every other tablet manufacturer and software developer has been improving their game as well. PlayBook 2.0 will surely convince a lot of PlayBook owners to dig out their tablet, update it, and give it another whirl (if only to play Cut The Rope). At $199, it's also now a decent competitor to the Kindle Fire — it's more capable and powerful than the Kindle Fire, though it doesn't function quite as well or have anything approaching the same number of apps or content options. Still, I can’t imagine a new buyer would choose the PlayBook over an iPad 2 or Transformer Prime, update or no update.”