So, I was fortunate to get my sticky little fingers on a Blackberry Playbook 16GB for the last couple of weeks. I had been fairly keen on getting one to play around with and see how it compares to the ipad and then determine if its worth getting either. To clairfy my position; while I don't own the iPad, I had played around with one for a number of weeks a couple of months back; equally being a mac convert had been fairly keen to get one. However, I do own a Blackberry Torch, and have been impressed, so felt that I should at the least give RIM a fighting chance at my continued patronage...
So, first impressions; its all black, it fits in the palm of my hand, and it has a good weight to it. I went through the set up process, which was fairly simple, and found that navigating around the tool, was reasonably simple. Stroke up from the blackberry logo on the bottom, you get the extended menu. Stroke diagonally from the left, and you get the keyboard, (which I found to be fairly responsive and user friendly, however I did struggle with the lack of caps lock... I LIKE WRITNG LOUDLY!) Other than that most of these tablets are similar from a navigation perspective.
The Blackberry Bridge that allows you to tether your BB phone was fine, however, at the set up stage, with the QR code, for some unbeknown reason, my torch was unable to be read the flipping thing - which was annoying. However it connected perfectly on manual "bridging". Once I was connected, I was able to get email, calendar entries, contacts and BBM. I tried the Bridge Browser (the one on the mobile - to test when I was out of wifi range) and I constantly got error code 13 and no browser; which was really frustrating, and something they need to fix!
On the whole though, for email and bbm etc the bridge worked fine, I'm not sure it would replace the phone for being my main source of mobile email response, but there was a convienience level in having it there.
BB App world was cool; but really very limited in what you can download. Many of the tools that I am used to on my mobile device have not been extended to fit the PB which was annother irritant and mark against it. I did like, contrary to what I had heard prior to release, that my mobile app world account was able to be used on the playbook, merging all the apps I have.
Web surfing... this is the big sell point for rim, and frankly; believe the hype! I had as good a surfing experience on this little tablet as I do on my laptop. Sure, certain heavy rendering sites are a little slow; but on the whole, I felt that this would be my biggest reason to purchase.
Some of the games were cool. I enjoyed docs to go, didn't find an excuse to use the excel app, and the presentation tool I found that I had to email a ppt to myself in order to be able to get it on the tablet, and even then, I was restricted by the BES that we have through the office.
Camera's seemed fine, the back facing camera was fair quality, the facing camera, much the same. I would of liked to have seen a Skype app rolled out before release and been able to try the web chat, but no go thus far!
I have to say when I went to view videos, I was impressed; especially if it was HD. The image was crisp, ran smoothly and all in all the experience was excellent, I have also been impressed with the sound quality; which for a small unit, I was impressed how far the sound travelled.
So there it is... My opinion; would I buy one?
Frankly, it would be a tough call. If it was a gift - for sure! If it was a choice between BB-PB and the iPad2; had I not heard on BBC Click that the cameras on the iPad are crap, I might plum for that. Frankly for now, I have a perfectly good macbook, and a perfectly good BB torch; do I need a tablet for work or otherwise?
I think I can live without.
Until next time.
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