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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gentrfunk - Saturday, April 16, 2011 - link
Hi Folks,Anyone have any info on how messages are passed back and forth between the kernel? I'm interested in the fact that microkernel systems typically had problems in some cases locking up the cue with multiple rapid input (e.g. mouse clicks, etc)...
any thoughts?
mavricxx - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
The thing about this tablet is that you gotta give it time to mature. Right now is at its infant state where there are little apps, and the software is still being refined. I will say that the best thing about this tablet that sets it apart from Android is that you won't have different iterations of say Honeycomb 3.0 and having to wait forever for updates. One good thing RIM has going for it is its reputation for kicking out updates. Hopefully, it kicks it in turbo and lots of GOOD apps start coming out. Another thing I'd like to point out that NONE of the reviews have applauded RIM for is the standard MicroUSB charger which all phones use now a days. This is a big deal as if you happen to lose your charger its no big deal. I hope to see a lot of cool and useful gadgets for this device as well. One major thing I see that RIM screwed up besides the whole email/calendar/contacts thing was the absence of expandable memory; Had they added a FULL size SDXC card support they would have blown this thing to another level. A couple of things I'd like to see with the upcoming updates are: Free turn-by-turn Nav, universal search and maybe some full free FPS(Call of duty)/racing(need for speed)/action(Grand theft auto)/RTS(Company of heroes) games to make this thing worthwhile to buy. Lastly, I think RIM could have made this thing more desirable to purchase as well by including headphones, USB adaptor and an HDMI adaptor.worldbfree4me - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
This year, Tablets will probably be only 2nd to HDTV's in Black Friday advertising. I like my iPad 1, but it is lacking in a lot of areas. I think that the features I crave on the HTC View (Stylus Input), Black Berry and HP WebOS (Bridge), and True Multitasking will eventually find their way onto the rest of the pack and by this time next year we will finally see complete Tablets with I/O galore (HDMi Mirroring,USB 3.0, BT 3.0, MicroSD etc). With Amazon leading the Cloud Storage Charge, on device storage will become not so this keeping retail prices nominal. Even right now because of my distrust in Apples’ walled garden. I have no Music or Videos stored locally on my iPad. Sugar Sync, Evernote, Drop Box, and of course Gmail rounds out my storage albeit virtually.Thanks for another great analysis!
mblair - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 - link
The RIM playbook is a game changer. The slick, easy to use interface and true multi-tasking make it a dream to use. Its Flash execution is flawless. I was surprised how many times I needed Flash. It made my Ipad almost useless some of the time.The best feature for me is Blackberry Bridge. A Wi-Fi tablet but with my blackberry in my pocket and Bluetooth, I can operate 3G. I can't do that with my Wi-Fi only Ipad! And I don't need two user accounts or an extra monthly fee.
It did not take me long to get used to the Blackberry paradigm. Now I take it everywhere, it is small enough to be truly portable. Battery life is OK, not spectacular but pretty good. The video rendering is world class.
I use gmail so the browser is all I want or need most of the time. I have my Blackberry for email from work and when tied to the Playbook I can use the larger screen seamlessly. The Playbook gives me all I want.
Good bye Apple. It has been a slice.
I love it. I have given my son the Ipad. He wants a Playbook. Maybe later.
Michael Blair
Shadowmaster625 - Friday, April 22, 2011 - link
This is a screenshot from a flash game running on IE9: http://grab.by/9WxQThere are huge gray sections that are failing to render or whatnot. The sections grow over time. It looks really bad. This doesn't happen on firefox. But the game does run faster on IE9, for whatever that is worth... obviously not much.
exprimarelibera - Monday, July 18, 2011 - link
I bought one today, more than four months after this article and still no email application available. I'm pretty disappointed, after all that's what made RIM what they are.http://www.exprimarelibera.ro/2011/review-m-am-juc...
No Netflix Streaming - Sunday, November 27, 2011 - link
This tablet DOES NOT STREAM NETFLIX. The Netflix app only queues discs. Contact Blackberry Before You Buy and Demand a Netflix Streaming App.