The BlackBerry PlayBook Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 13, 2011 9:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Smartphones
- RIM
- BlackBerry
- PlayBook
- Mobile
Pictures
One of the few first party apps that ships on the PlayBook is called Pictures. As you might guess, it's where you can access all photos you've taken with the device as well as copied to it. Photos have to be placed in the /media/photos directory on the PlayBook but once present, they're automatically added to the Pictures library.
Albums are created according to folder name. There are no fancy preview gestures to peek at what's in an album, however once you're viewing an image you can of course zoom in/out using stretch and pinch gestures. There's a simple slideshow mode that flips through photos rather quickly, although there's no way to control the slideshow interval. I normally feel like slideshows proceed too slowly by default but on the PlayBook I'd argue that it flips through pictures too quickly.
When viewing a single picture a top-down bezel swipe brings up the ability to delete the photo, scroll through the list of photos in the current album, or set the photo as wallpaper. You can also launch the camera app from here.
The Pictures app is pretty standard fare although there isn't much in the way of sorting or customization options. It requires that you've got your photos pretty well organized by folder as there's no way to view photos by date and definitely no face detection. Common file formats are supported (JPEG, PNG, GIF) while RAW files aren't (at least from a Nikon D700 and Panasonic GF2).
Music
There's a pretty standard music player app on the PlayBook:
RIM worked with 7digital to provide direct-to-device MP3 sales. Songs are DRM-free and are priced at $1.29 per download:
Video Playback: High Profile Supported
Videos, like photos, must be stored a specific directory (/media/videos) for the Videos app to find them. The PlayBook supports .avi, .mp4 and .m4v file extensions, unfortunately there's no support for .mkv containers. The lack of .mkv support is particularly disappointing on the PlayBook because TI's OMAP 4 is actually capable of playing High Profile 1080p content in addition to videos encoded to base and main profiles.
While you will see lower battery life when playing back High Profile 1080p content, you at least don't sacrifice any performance in doing so. I didn't encounter any dropped frames regardless of encode complexity on the PlayBook. Admittedly I didn't push really high bitrates (my 1080p test was encoded at roughly 10Mbps), but even getting to this point is pretty impressive.
Maps
Microsoft's Bing powers the default search engine and maps app on the PlayBook. While the search engine is configurable, there's no option to prefer Google Maps instead.
Although the PlayBook has GPS and WiFi support, the current build of the PlayBook software doesn't support location services. As a result the maps app is only useful for looking up directions, but not telling you how to get to your destination from your current location.
The Bing Maps app is reasonably quick but not as fast as Maps on the iPad 2 or on the Motorola Xoom.
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tipoo - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
Did you have anything running in the background there? Gizmodo and Engadget both got within 10% of the iPad 2's score, the one here seems to be much slower.Anyways, as usual this is easily one of the best reviews.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
This may be a sunspider 0.9 vs. 0.91 issue, RIM said the same thing but 0.9 for some reason gives us the scores you see on the PlayBook vs. the competition (just re-ran again to be sure).I'm still waiting for a response from RIM as to why the relative performance comparison is much worse under 0.9. We've stuck with 0.9 to maintain backwards compatibility with our older smartphone numbers but if need be I'll switch over to 0.91 for tablets.
I'm running 0.91 numbers now, let's see what I come up with.
Thanks for reading and your kind words :)
Take care,
Anand
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
This is definitely a 0.9.1 vs. 0.9.0 issue. I'm not sure what is causing the PlayBook to choke on 0.9.0. I will update the article with 0.9.1 numbers as well.Take care,
Anand
8steve8 - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
very high black levels on the screen is disappointing. (samoled/samoled+ is amazing)Also the bezel looks like its a huge percentage of the surface area, which is ugly.
7" seems to be the worst size, too big for pockets, too small for ideal consumption of entertainment or web.
The Base OS seems decent, although without email or calendar, we will have to give this another look in august.
That said, I still find tablets a niche device that few situations actually call for. Usually I find myself wanting a physical keyboard, or at least more screen space while typing. Also if you have to constantly hold it up, or buy a stand, why not use little laptops laptops, the screens don't need a stand : )
I find it a good device for a coffee table or any profession where you are standing/not at a table. Otherwise I'll stick to smartphone/laptop or desktop.
Solandri - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
The contrast ratio is the same as the iPad 2, so the high black levels is an artifact of the high white levels. In other words, if you turned down the brightness to match the max brightness of the iPad 2, the black levels should be the same as on the iPad 2.Along the same lines, I'm wondering what was the brightness setting during the battery tests. Usually reviewers do something like set brightness to half during the battery tests. But that seems a bit unfair since the Playbook's screen is so much brighter than the competition's. Wouldn't a more fair comparison be to set its brightness output to be the same number of nits as the iPad 2 in its battery test? In effect, think of the screen as the same as the iPad 2, but with the option to really crank up the brightness if you're outdoors in sunlight.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
So our old method was to set everything to 50%, but lately I've been doing brightness matching right around ~150 nits on these tablets.Take care,
Anand
HilbertSpace - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
Conclusion page:"I'm glad to see RIM experimenting with form factors. After using the Galaxy Tab 8.9 at CTIA I felt that may be the perfect balance between portability and functionality. The 7-inch PlayBook "
- something got mixed up there.
Aikouka - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
I wonder if the browser would be better if you had the option to hide the menu/address bar?Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
You actually do have the option to hide the menu/address bar, it's in the upper right corner of the browser. That does improve things but it also makes it less convenient to navigate to the next website.Take care,
Anand
jjj - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
In the final words it would be worth reminding readers that it has no SD card slot, IMO a fundamental feature for phones/tablets nowdays.