The BlackBerry tablet is here, and it looks nicer than anybody expected it to be. Its slimmer and lighter than the iPad, supports corporate applications and has advanced data-security features. Here are the 10 Things You Need to Know About the BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet.
1. It’s a 7-inch Tablet with a 1024×600 Screen that Weighs 0.9 Pounds
Meaning it’s smaller and lighter than the iPad, with a more pixel-dense screen (text is gonna look cleaner). It’s a little bigger and heavier than the Samsung Galaxy Tab, on the other hand. ( Galaxy Tab looks more like a really big phone.)
2. It’s Running BlackBerry Tablet OS
As rumored, the BlackBerry PlayBook isn’t running “BlackBerry 6,” but the BlackBerry tablet OS, which is “powered by QNX technology.” QNX is a software company RIM bought in April, whose software is used in products by Cisco and GE, among others. The OS is built on QNX’s Neutrino microkernel.
It supports a whole bunch of standard platforms and technologies, like POSIX OS, SMP, Open GL, BlackBerry 6, WebKit, Java, Adobe Flash and AIR, along with RIM’s new BlackBerry WebWorks platform. Apps written for WebWorks will run on BlackBerry 6 or the PlayBook, while Java makes it easier for developers to port Java-based BlackBerry 6 apps. Oh, and OpenGL means there’s serious potential for graphically intense games.
It’s got a tablet-optimized UI and multitasks out of the gate, unlike the iPad. And unlike Android, it has a nicer interface for navigating through applications, like a cross between webOS’s cards and Apple’s CoverFlow. It’s got an onscreen keyboard for typing. The snippets of App World in the preview video look a lot like what you have on BlackBerry phones, a grid of tiles. The music player looks a bit like the iPod app on the iPad, but skinned in a slate color.
