The BlackBerry PlayBook Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 13, 2011 9:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Smartphones
- RIM
- BlackBerry
- PlayBook
- Mobile
Apps and Development
Everyone loves to repeat Apple's iOS app number verbatim: "65,000 iPad apps and counting" was the talking point after the iPad 2 launch event. In reality, that's hundreds of times more than the number of apps you'll actually use on a regular basis. Most of the really popular apps are cross platform, at least when it comes to iOS and Android. There are definitely iOS exclusives just as there are Android exclusives, perhaps more of the former than the latter but ultimately I don't put too much weight on quantity of apps. If there's something in particular you want that doesn't exist for one platform but does for another, that's worth talking about.
The PlayBook app experience, at least on day one, unfortunately isn't anywhere near that of what you get on Honeycomb. So if you felt that Honeycomb was under-supported by 3rd party apps at launch, the PlayBook will disappoint you.
Let's first talk about App World - RIM's app catalog on the PlayBook. Apps are divided into categories and you can of course look at the top free, top purchased, newest and recently updated apps. I haven't encountered an app that needs updating so I'm not entirely sure how that process works yet.
Browsing for apps by category is a bit more complicated than I'd like. Each category seen in the screen below has a handful of subcategories:
I've noticed that app categorization doesn't always match up with the sub categories properly. There is of course full text search in App World, which seems to work well except that there just isn't that much to search for today.
One nice feature of the App World app is the My World page. Here you get a list of everything you've installed on the app (including size and version number) and you're given the option of deleting apps from here.
RIM also provides you with a list of apps you've deleted and gives you the option of reinstalling any of them. So if you deleted something you end up missing, you don't have to go searching for it again - it's just in the uninstalled tab in My World. Deleted/uninstalled apps don't physically reside on your device so they'll have to be re-downloaded, but the convenience is still nice.
You don't need to login with your BlackBerry ID to download free apps, but anything you have to purchase requires an authentication step.
App World is one of the few first party apps that just isn't very smooth. Animations are choppy and the whole thing just begs to be optimized. I can't stress enough how having a mixture of 60 fps and sub-30 fps frame rates on the same tablet somehow stands out more than if the device were just consistently below 30 fps.
RIM sent along a list of companies that are working on PlayBook apps, however I don't have specifics as to what they're working on or when it'll be released:
· Adobe Connect & Lifecycle
· Airplay
· Atari
· BoxTone
· Cerner Corporation
· Digital Chocolate
· EA
· eBay
· EpixHD
· Evernote
· FGL
· Fortune
· Gameloft
· Globe & Mail
· HFMUS - Car and Driver magazine
· Huffington Post
· Loblaws
· Mattel
· MediaFly
· OpenText Everywhere
· Post Media
· Salesforce.com - Chatter
· ScoreMedia (ScoreMobile)
· Slacker Radio
· Sports Illustrated
· Telicost (Anomalous Networks)
· The Weather Channel
· The Weather Network
· Time
· Unity3D
In terms of developing apps for the PlayBook you really have three options: the WebWorks SDK, BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR and native C/C++.
The WebWorks SDK enables HTML5 and JavaScript based apps to run on the PlayBook, similar to what the original apps for iOS were like. The Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR lets you bundle and target the PlayBook with apps you've built using Adobe Flash Builder. And finally, the highest performance option is to obviously write native C/C++ targeting the PlayBook.
There is a fourth method of getting apps onto the BlackBerry PlayBook, using an as-of-now unreleased Android App Player. RIM is working on a port of Android that will run on top of QNX, abstracted from the underlying hardware/software (think VM). The Android App Player should be able to run all apps that work on Gingerbread (Android 2.3). You won't get access to the Android marketplace, developers will still have to package and send all apps to RIM for signing - but it should allow existing Android developers to avoid a full blown code re-write in order to get their apps working on PlayBook right away.
It's still far too early to see how successful this is going to be and I do have concerns about performance (the layer between QNX and Android is bound to cause a performance impact). Of course Android apps won't have direct access to hardware so things like 3D games are likely going to be too slow to work at all. It's an interesting option but I'll reserve judgement until I see it implemented in a shipping device. At this point I wouldn't assume that the PlayBook is just going to give you a great Android app experience as well as a great PlayBook experience. I think that's simply too far fetched.
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Azethoth - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
That is a curious statement. What do you want lots of memory for?I can see memory being better for a phone that you listen to music from as more memory = more of your (compressed) library can fit on it. Personally I only sync particular playlists to my phone / iPad anyway.
As for other stuff, well apps just do not consume a large amount of space. For my iPad 2 I went with the smallest memory size. The larger size I have on my original, er I mean on my sister's "new" iPad, was just a waste for me.
Chloiber - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
Because it's an easy way to share things and upgrade your memory if you need more. I won't pay 100$ for 16GB of NAND flash (which cost's like 15$).jjj - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
For a device that can shoot and play 1080p video 16GB-64GB of storage is very little (and anything above 16GB is way too costly) Then there are also photos,music,apps that maybe soon will be actually able to do things and become bigger,it is after all a computing device and even if smartphones/tablets are in their infancy we can still hope that they mature sooner rather than later.BuffyzDead - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
"The screen is too small to comfortably read in portrait mode and even in landscape things can get a bit cramped." Steve Jobs already warned the entire industry on this point. It's too small to be a successful tablet. Everyone has portability in their Smartphone."Apple's A5 still has a much faster GPU" .and the playbook isn't even shipping yet
"App launches are unfortunately a bit high latency. .....whole process takes a couple of seconds but it feels longer than firing up similar iOS or Honeycomb apps." just throw more CPU at the problem. You know, down the road.
"With no email or calendar apps, the PlayBook doesn't have a whole lot to notify you of. Presently the only notifications the PlayBook will deliver have to do with remaining battery capacity." LOL at this one.
I predict Now, this thing will never sell in volume. Even improved versions down the road won't sell.
3 reasons:
1) It's too small.
2) The User Experience does not even come close to that of the iPad1
3) NO APPS
Yes, while there are company's that may force this down their employees throat, that is not where the growth of tablet use is coming from, in enterprise.
It's coming 100% from employees wanting to use their iPad's in the work environment.
You finish with:
"there are still more revolutions that will take place between now and when the mobile market finally matures"
Ask yourself, Honestly, is there ANYTHING about this "experiment for RIM"
that has an inkling of REVOLUTION ????
Azethoth - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
The proper quote is:"While Apple and Google are clearly out to a substantial lead, there are still more revolutions that will take place between now and when the mobile market finally matures. I'm not saying that Apple or Google won't end up on top, I'm just saying that it's not guaranteed they will either."
and
"The PlayBook is a reasonable experiment for RIM, but I need to see more to really recommend the tablet."
See how in context Anand makes sense? Rather than claiming the ridiculous: "this RIM tablet is a revolution", Anand is merely saying that this is an immature industry. Everyone fully expects actual game changing revolutions in this area in the future.
Search this site for Anand's excellent follow up to the iPad 2 release that asks: "How do I as a blogger use a tablet to create [text] content". There were some responses about maybe covers that double as keyboards. There was wishful thinking about voice input maturing real soon now. Mostly there is a need for some kind of interface revolution before a tablet can become a reasonable answer for a blogger on the go. These are the revolutions Anand needs in a tablet.
BuffyzDead - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
Correct !I wholeheartedly agree with Anand's review and conclusion:
There are no guarantee's what the future may hold and he can not recommend this Playbook.
1) I wanted to add that this Playbook will in fact be a total failure. Time will prove me right or wrong. Again, I predict Total Failure.
2) I wanted to point out how RIM, as is evident by this Playbook version 1,
has demonstrated Zero in it's capability to provide ANY REVOLUTION.
At most, it's an outright attempt to copy or emulate (poorly) what the iPad REVOLUTION IS.
BTW,
If you think that "designing a tablet" to cater to "the blogger on the go" is a measure of success, then I pray for RIM's sake, you are not on their design team.
Anand has repeatedly pointed out how a tablet might just not be for him, in general.
I have maintained for the past 15 months that the iPad's true REVOLUTION, is that it CREATED a NEW MARKET.
ALL of Apples competitors are playing catchup & copycat to cater to that NEW MARKET, which the iPad CREATED.
SandmanWN - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
For real... lay off the coffee and Jobs shlong.melgross - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
For real, it's the only tablet so far that sold more than a small number. As many others have pointed out, so far the tablet market is really the iPad market. Other manufacturers have to prove that they can sell a large number of devices. We know that the Tab, is not a real tablet by Google's standards, and that it sold in much smaller numbers than the number shipped to retailers and cell companies. The Xoom is assumed to have managed about 100,000 sales, and what else has there been that seriously competes?Now, the Playbook, which has been criticized by those in the industry for having poor battery life, and problems with the software before release, despite RIM,s denials, is proving, from all the reviews I've now read today, to be having all of those problems just days before release. Pogue has stated that RIM is feverishly sending out updated on a daily basis. That's not good.
Other tablets won't arrive for at least a couple more months.
So what does the market really consist of now?
melgross - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
It's hard to say. There are a lot of writers who have said that they type just fine on the iPad's virtual keyboard. Everyone's different. I remember a lot of people complaining about the first iPhone's keyboard, but since then, many, if not most new smartphones have no physical keyboards anymore, so people are getting used to them.I'm typing on my iPad2 now. The only complaints about the way Apple set it up are that I think that too much space is wasted on the two large numeric keyboard call up keys at the bottom of the keyboard, much of which could have been used for other functions, such as an "@" key, for instance. Otherwise, it's fine. On a 7" screen, typing for longer periods will be more problematical.
yelped - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - link
Stop trolling, and PLEASE grow up.Thanks.