RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook is not a finished product. Sure, it looks like one. The design is gorgeous, the interface rocks, and it has this ingenious bit of programming inside called BlackBerry Bridge, but it is not fully baked. It is, in reality, a near-complete beta tablet that has as many frustrating components as it does promising ones. This tablet should succeed—especially in the enterprise—but thanks to RIM's bungled pre-launch, the scrappy little gadget now has its work cut out for it.
As one might expect with a product that's not quite finished, the PlayBook is an unnerving mix of good, bad, and just plain confounding. Here are my Likes and Dislikes.
Like: QR code to connect BlackBerry smartphone and BlackBerry PlayBook
I simply love that RIM decided to use a QR code to, essentially, build the BlackBerry Bridge between phone and tablet. I did have to install Bridge software on my phone and enable it on the PlayBook. However, to make the two devices talk to each other via Bluetooth; I simply scanned a QR code on the PlayBook screen with my BlackBerry Torch's camera. I expect we'll see more of this on future devices.
Dislike: Every single button
The PlayBook's black, 7-inch body and squarish corners cut a somewhat unusual and welcome figure in the increasingly cookie-cutter tablet design space. Unfortunately, the buttons look and work as if they were lifted from a cheap feature phone. They're too small and poorly positioned. The tiny, round power button is particularly difficult to press. Worse yet, it doubles as the wake button. Apple separated the home and power buttons on the iPad and iPad 2. I can use the power button to put the iPad to sleep, but the home button always wakes it up (in the iPad 2, it wakes when I open the magnetized cover).
The PlayBook's slightly recessed, do-it-all button manages to do nothing particularly well. Putting the buttons along the top edge gives the PlayBook a nice, clean face, but it also means that every time I want to wake the PlayBook, I have to pick it up and reach for the itty, bitty button.
Like: The screen
I know the PlayBook's screen resolution is actually lower than the iPad 2's, but when you squeeze roughly the same number of pixels into a smaller space, the results is, inevitably, a sharper looking screen. I simply can't get enough of looking at photos and watching HD movies on the 7-inch interface. Put simply, the screen is drop-dead gorgeous and everything looks wonderful on it.
Dislike: Total lack of critical native apps like Twitter and Mail
It's by now common knowledge that the PlayBook has no native email app. Not a smart launch choice, but RIM promises one is coming. RIM, though, certainly punk'd us with all those nice preset icons on the device for Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail. One look and you think they're all heading to custom-built PlayBook apps. Well, they're not. These are just shortcuts and for now, at least, there aren't any PlayBook Gmail, Twitter, or Facebook apps. You certainly fooled me, RIM.
Dislike: BlackBerry Bridge inconsistencies
RIM has handed us a number of BlackBerry PlayBooks to test, but thus far, only one of them has effectively displayed the BlackBerry Bridge apps. These are the on-tablet interfaces that give you access to the email, contacts, tasks, and calendar that live on your phone. It all works through Bluetooth and, as I noted above, is actually quite easy to set up. But two out of three of us have not been able to access the apps—which means BlackBerry Bridge is useless.
Like: The tablet-ready interface on all the BlackBerry Bridge apps
I did get to see the BlackBerry Bridge apps working on our first PlayBook review unit. I was impressed with the very tablet-friendly interfaces and that none of the data felt like it was living anywhere else but the PlayBook tablet. If RIM gets this working consistently, it will be a killer feature for all existing BlackBerry smartphone customers.
Dislike: The case
Yes, this case is light, thin, and super-flexible. Still, I sometimes struggled to get the PlayBook in and out of it, and what is with that smell?
Dislike: No image options
I have photos and screen grabs on my PlayBook (you capture by simultaneously hitting the volume up and down buttons), but they're stuck on the device. I can't share on Facebook or Twitter—at least not through the photo viewer where my two options are Delete and Set as Wallpaper.
Like: Control from the bezel
I love that the primary PlayBook interface and many of the apps use the bezel as a secondary control interface. It makes the smallish screen seem bigger than it really is.
Dislike: The flaky touch screen
I don't know if it's a matter of calibration or what, but I have to repeat way too many of my touches and gestures on the PlayBook. I gently tap the screen once and, often as not, nothing happens. The second attempt usually, but not always, works.
Dislike: Sluggish accelerometer
You know it's beta software when…the screen doesn't reorient itself the moment you flip the device. Matters get worse when the screen does reorient itself, but the thumbnails of all your running apps do not—they remain in landscape mode, flipped on their sides. Upon further inspection, it looks like some apps, like Bing Maps, are not designed to work in portrait mode.
Like: The camera
Using the PlayBook's 5-megapixel camera really helps put the iPad 2's low-rez cameras in perspective. Everything on the PlayBook looks sharp. Granted, both can shoot HD video.
Dislike: Camera is slow
You can almost count out the seconds between the time you touch the PlayBook's camera icon and when the PlayBook's camera actually takes a shot. The iPad 2's is virtually instantaneous.
Many, but not all, of my dislikes can probably be fixed with a software update. In fact, RIM may solve most of them in time for tomorrow's April 19 launch. If they don't, the prospective tablet customer should just keep moving along—nothing to see here.
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