The BlackBerry PlayBook Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 13, 2011 9:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Smartphones
- RIM
- BlackBerry
- PlayBook
- Mobile
Camera
The PlayBook comes equipped with a 3MP front-facing camera and a 5MP rear-facing camera. Neither sensor is aided by any sort of Flash. The rear sensor is 4:3 and captures at 2592 x 1944 for full resolution. By default the PlayBook shoots in 16:9 which results in a cropped 2592 x 1456 (3.7MP) image.
Image captures from the rear sensor are high contrast but typically lack sharpness. I've also noticed that it's not too difficult to trip up the white balance algorithm, at least outdoors.
RIM takes a page from Apple's playbook and bumps up the contrast to make up for inherent limitations in the camera sensor.
The front camera also has a 4:3 ratio sensor, capturing natively at 2048 x 1536 (3MP). In 16:9 mode you just lose some vertical resolution as the sensor is cropped to 2048 x 1152 (2.35MP).
The front facing sensor is unusually good indoors without a lot of light. You still can't take photos in pitch black but with a little bit of ambient light you can generally get a pretty bright image out of the front facing camera. RIM will eventually enable video calling between PlayBook users, however it's not functional on the review build of the PlayBook software.
The camera app itself takes about 3 - 4 seconds to start and has a pretty simple UI. There's a button to switch between stills and video recording, a slider for digital zoom, a shutter release button, a location toggle and a button to switch between front and rear facing cameras.
It takes about two seconds to switch from the rear to the front facing camera, and about 1.8 seconds to capture an image. While it may not sound like a lot, the capture latency is high enough that you have to make sure you hold the PlayBook still for those 1.8 seconds otherwise you'll end up with a shifted image.
The camera app supports minimal customization. You can change aspect ratio, turn on image stabilization and choose either auto, sports or whiteboard for camera presets.
Videos
Both the front and rear sensors can shoot video at 480p, 720p or 1080p at 30 fps. Videos are shot at 720p by default.
Captured video actually doesn't look too bad. The lack of sharpness I complained about in the stills is somewhat masked by motion and what we get instead is a pretty reasonable platform for shooting video, at least for sharing on the web.
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name99 - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
"I am starting to doubt the iSupply numbers you quoted."And I am starting to doubt that your contrary opinions are of much value.
"Their memory prices are also highly suspect, clinging to $2/GB for what are still really small drives compared where higher performing SSDs already are."
(a) The price here is for STORAGE, not memory as you call it.
(b) The issue is that Apple wants flash that is low power, not high performance. This probably means that want flash that works at low voltage.
This is not trivial --- as evidenced by the fact that pretty much EVERY SSD vendor is incapable of shipping a drive that can write reliably at USB power levels.
If the market for low power flash is different from the market for high performance (and high peak power) flash, then comparing prices as you are doing makes no sense.
MonkeyPaw - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
That is kinda sad. I find the tablet market a bit of a mystery still. The hardware is either loaded and expensive, or cheaply made junk. The software is still in limbo. I wanted to try a tablet without much risk, so I ended upgetting a Nook Color and a microSD card and went through the mod community. If all fails, its still a good dreaded, but its actually been a lot of fun trying all the mods. Can't wait to see a good build of HC for it, as the prerelease build isn't too bad already. A prefect tablet? No, but the specs are decent, the screen is great, and the cost was very acceptable. :)MonkeyPaw - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
LoL. Dreaded = e reader. Nice spell check android! :Deliotw - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
They are clearly prioritizing the corporate market that is their bread and butter. I'd never buy this for myself but the "too big to fail" bank I work for could deploy these quickly with the bridge features. That wouldn't be possible with iOS or Android. This isolation capability is impressive but I it still seems like they are releasing it with too many things missing.Spivonious - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
For business users yes, but I think most home users (aka non-techies) use web mail and wouldn't be too bothered.PeteH - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
The problem is that RIMM appears to be primarily targeting business users. Maybe their thinking is that business users will have their Blackberry on them anyway, making an application unnecessary, but it seems like a big oversight to me.galuple - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
It's a corporate security thing. Corporate types very serious about security. No email client means that if one of these gets lost, it doesn't have sensitive documents on it since it's all on the blackberry.Kiddo2050 - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
I could care less. This is aimed at Blackberry users as of now, and I am one. With Blackberry Bridge this is a none issue.Sorry, but I just can't go for Apple and it's closed app eco system (the AOL of today). I've had numerous apple products (everything except the ipad in fact) and I just got so sick of plugging everything into iTunes. Just tired of that company ripping me off left right and center. Here's the "New" Macbook Pro, yes it's already out of date in terms of specs but you don't care because it's Apple. Sure my Blackberry phone is not cutting edge but the point is no one at RIM pretends it is. The iPad2 was rolled out as the hotest new tablet and they didn't say anything about the RAM which was sub par - "just don't tell our consumers they won't know." No thanks Steve, iPad2 and Apple = FAIL start caring about your customers instead of screwing them every chance you get.
zephyros - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
it's true but so wat? apple came out without cut and paste before...why is everyone so surprised? it's how they fix the issue and how fast that matters. at least they know about it and came out mentioning it instead of letting customers find out themselvesEthaniel - Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - link
... great job, Anand.