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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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.