To be fair, the “upgrade was free and in many cases automatic.” I imagine a reasonably sizable percentage of PlayBook owners are a little more tech-savvy, picking up the PlayBook in the first place because of the great value it provided at the significantly reduced price point of $199 and up. And they all knew that OS 2.0 was on the way, bringing with it native email, contacts and calendar functionality. BlackBerry Messenger is still notably missing. The good news is that the Android app player is part of the picture now, opening the door for all kinds of additional apps for the tablet.

According to Chitika, these early adoption rates for the new OS will lead to about 75% of PlayBooks rocking OS 2.0 in three weeks. This assumes a 50% decay rate over time.

The post Nearly Half of Blackberry Playbook Owners Have Upgraded to OS 2.0 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

In this past year, tablets have dominated sales over e-readers. Estimates are made that Amazon Kindle Fire has sold over 2 million units, and Barnes & Noble has sold a million of its NOOK Tablet. Both vendors were also successful in selling their previous models at the discounted prices. However, you shouldn’t forget another very popular tablet — the HP Touchpad, fire sales of which were bringing over 700,000 tablets in the hands of eager customers. Then, as the numbers of RIM Blackberry Playbooks sold at similar numbers to HP’s Touchpad, the popularity of having a well rounded more powerful device has grown significantly.

From a buyers standpoint, it obviously didn’t matter whether all these portable WiFi internet devices of 7″ and 9.7″ varieties were actually marketed as tablets or e-book readers. What really mattered was the pricing of them ranging from $99 and $149 for a HP Touchpad (now can be had at around $200-$250 on eBay) through $199 for a Kindle Fire and 16 GB Blackberry Playbook, upwards to $249 for the NOOK Tablet. Looking at these price tags and comparing them to the sales numbers, it’s easy to understand that this season’s sweet spot for a 7″ tablet is around $199. In other words, if hardware makers are able to put a $199 price on their device they may sell twice as many as competitors with similar, even if a tad more powerful and versatile. Yet the overall preferences of customers spoiled by the August fire sale of HP Touchpads at $99 and $149 were definitely getting a great deal.

With three million users owning these tablets, birth to a small but very dynamic army of hackers was born. No-one can tell them that they can’t do this or that with their tablets only because the manufacturer said so. Popularity of Android and especially Android 4.0 (“Ice Cream Sandwich”) is way too high to stop the army of tinkering, many don’t even have a warranty to void.

Barnes & Noble has estimated that out of millions of their first “tablet” e-readers only 3% were “rooted” or tinkered with. This dismissive figure is quite misleading, as the buying decision of people who might never run an alternative firmware for it (such as CyanogenMod 7) could be very much swayed in favor of a NOOK Color just by the notion that this e-reader can have a “full” Android/Google experience on top of very limited functions offered by Barnes & Noble.

Let’s have a look what’s going on in the “alternative” uses of these tablets.

1. Amazon Kindle Fire

Custom CyanogenMod 7 ROM is being built, and we have posted a video tutorial of its installation on Fire here. The process is quite convoluted, except for a single button there are no other hardware buttons available on Fire to operate the ClockWorkMod recovery routine. Sound, audio, sound tracks don’t work just yet on this early beta, but the work on this ROM continues. Less “invasive” customization may take form of “rooting” the device and sideloading all the available for Gingerbread Google Experience: Google’s Market, and Google Apps. Rooting cuts Amazon Instant video access though. But all it takes is a simple routine to “unroot” the device after all additions have been made.

We informed you that the first experimental release of Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0.1) runs on the device already. Here again, sound is missing which might obviously be explained by similar reasoning of a faulty driver as in CM7 case. The work is going on, and Fire becomes a truly powerful tablet that Amazon could never dream of.

2. Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Tablet

Bootloader of the device is apparently locked. The reasoning behind employing such a strong security measure is quite unclear, because an obvious argument that Netflix might require it for certification of its app for the NOOK Tablet doesn’t hold water. Namely, NOOK Tablet can be quite easily rooted, and superuser access can be granted to whatever part of the system except for bootloader and kernel. Netflix app is nowhere near that secure zone somebody tried to envision. The decision to put NOOK Tablet’s bootloader under a lock hinders the development of alternative firmwares for the tablet, just like the similar locked bootloaders did to certain Android phones.

There are ongoing efforts to solve this problem by utilizing several techniques that might help to circumvent this obstacle. Otherwise, and outside the bootloader issue, many customizations of the present stock firmware are becoming available.

3. HP Touchpad

This tablet is a quite a different beast: the two e-readers above are essentially based on the same TI OMAP4430 platform, this slate however is powered by Qualcomm’s dual core Snapdragon application processor. Some early Android development code for it helped to build a CyanogenMod 7 port of firmware for it. NOOK Color CM7 tree was used as the base for such porting. It’s mostly a proof of a concept, an Alpha 3 version, at which the development has stopped; the CM team of bright coders has Ice Cream Sandwich in their cross-hairs now.

Original, “stock” webOS is not dead either on the device, we reported the story of its release as the open source project recently. The community of webOS developers might not be as big as the Android community by head count, but it certainly has a good force. Ryan Paul of Arstechnica even muses that webOS could end up more open than Android is, he also thinks about “the possibility of porting the webOS platform’s sophisticated HTML application runtime environment to other operating systems. This could allow webOS applications to eventually run seamlessly on Android devices or even desktop platforms.”. This is kind of a unexpected turn. Yet these guys had most of the CSS3 rendering hardware accelerated (like nobody else outside the QNX and iOS camps. So sure, borrow from webOS if you can. Pity Android must abandon its framework on this move to webOSdroid, but who cares? Me, I don’t.

Steps to build Ice Cream Sandwich on the HP Touchpad are under consideration. But as everywhere in this race to ICS, getting a working Linux 3.0.1+ kernel is the key. So far, Android in the form of CM7 on HP Touchpad has failed to show sufficiently more interesting features than NOOK Color has with its CM7. Which is to say, further development of webOS on HP Touchpad can bring much more perfection to the usability of this tablet.

4. RIM Blackberry Playbook

Until lately, this iron-clad QNX-based system failed to attract much attention from the community of hackers. Yet a couple of weeks ago an irreverently named group of three hackers had obviously succeded in rooting its system to the point where they were able to put Google’s Android Market and Google Apps on this little beast:

The importance of this step is hard to overestimate. While the device is still running intact core of Blackberry OS, its “native” sandboxed Android player has left many things to be desired. Other pranks in the form of ICS or even webOS builds for BB Playbook may appear, and the value of a Playbook as a powerful, professional mobile computing tablet will only increase while its price drops lower and lower.

Appeal of IGoogle’s Ice Cream Sandwich is growing strong for “legacy” devices, too; developers of CyanogenMod 7 for NOOK Color are now busy putting Ice Cream Sandwich on the device. Then, there is ithis strange and very cheap Chinese Ainovo tablet that suddenly got Google’s blessing and certication as the first tablet running Ice Cream Sandwich. Obviously, this tablet will be late to be had as a Christmas gift, but the developments of ICS firmware for many other tablets (and smartphones, too) show a very significant trend.

Tablets in 2012 will certainly become more fun to own and use and of course, more open.

The post 2011 Hacker Tablet Guide: TouchPads, Fire’s and Playbooks Rooted appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The sale will apparently begin at Staples starting on Nomember 18th and the sale will run until December 1. If you want to spend more, the 32GB and 64GB model are receiving the same $300 cut, bringing them down to $299 and $399, respectively. But Staples isn’t the only place participating.

It turns out that the same deal is being offered by Best Buy and Future Shop in Canada too, as well as what appears to be Wal-Mart. I suppose part of the motivation is to clear out stock for the holidays, but the PlayBook could represent a much better buy than the TouchPad. Even though RIM is hurting, it’s unlikely they will discontinue QNX any time soon, so the PlayBook will still get plenty of support. RIM might be crazy enough to release a PlayBook 2 for all we know. Sales of the current PlayBook have been lacking, but I have a feeling they’re going to be sold out everywhere well before the weekend is out.

The post BlackBerry PlayBook Slashed Down To $199 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

There’s just one sign after another that Research in Motion rushed its tablet to market, hoping to strike the pan while it was still hot. The PlayBook came roaring out of the gates with all kinds of promises, only for us to learn that these promises aren’t exactly being fulfilled at time of launch. Like being able to run Android apps. Well, that’s almost here we think.

At the time, RIM announced a very bold strategy, saying that in addition to the apps being developed specifically for its new tablet platform, the PlayBook would also support the thousands of pre-existing apps developed for Google Android. It still can’t do that, but now we’re hearing that it will do that in “late fall.”

Earlier, RIM said that the Android compatibility would be ready for the summer. We’re about halfway through the summer already and there’s no Andy love on the QNX-powered PlayBook in sight. The “late fall” time frame comes by way of a “reliable source.” The way things are shaping up, we might not get a dose of Android on the PlayBook until a PlayBook 2 is released. Le sigh.

The post When will Android apps finally run on BlackBerry PlayBook? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Research In Motion announced that the PlayBook has been given security certification to be used by U.S. federal government agencies.

“This certification demonstrates our continued commitment to meeting the needs of security-conscious organizations and enables the U.S. federal government to buy with confidence knowing that the PlayBook meets their computing policy requirements for protecting sensitive information,” said RIM senior vice-president Scott Totzke in the press release.

RIM is touting its security and strong encryption as key to serving bodies like the U.S. government. The Blackberry maker bragged that its PlayBook is the first tablet to be approved for use by the United States federal government, and that no other tablet has received such approval. Apple, eat your heart out. RIM didn’t actually say if the US government has started taking orders for the PlayBook, or if they even will.

RIM appears to be quite thankful for this victory over the other tablet competitors, especially midst criticism that they rushed the Playbook to market, and dealt with software problems with constant updates (four in three months). Shares in RIM gained $1.10 or 4.4 per cent to close at $26.36 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Things are looking up for RIM and app developers who can start designing specialized military apps for QNX.

The post PlayBook Officially Cleared for US Government Use appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

OtterBox has ruggedized our lives yet again with the announcement and availability of two tablet protection offerings; the iPad 2 and BlackBerry PlayBook Defender Series Cases.

Both cases are made of a hardshell hi-impact polycarbonate with a one piece silicon jacket that surrounds your tablet for increased shock protection. The PlayBook case has a clear screen protector built-in to the shell which adds protection all around from dust, water drops, you name it. The iPad 2 version does not, but OtterBox is still including a stand-alone screen protector for you to apply for protection. Pricing is $69.95 for the BlackBerry PlayBook version and $89.95 for the iPad 2.

The post OtterBox Gets Tough with PlayBook and iPad 2 Tablets appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

RIM’s BlackBerry Playbook is the companies first effort to join the newly created applucrative tablet computing market. Apple launched the iPad just over one year ago, and in that time sold 14.8 million units or more. They have also recently launched a successor to the iPad 1 tablet, bringing many more features to the table that were expected the first time around. Despite this, the Apple App store really changed the world and the way we use computers today. Google has followed suit with their Android optimized OS for tablets, and as of recent, support for anything and everything; the OS for the world. RIM was a late comer to the tablet party, but despite this we wouldn’t be quick to rule them out. The PlayBook is a very well made device, although lacking in the apps department it does offer basic functionality that even the iPad 2 is without. Now, on to the review.

Hardware

A pure black slate with an industry first advanced capacitive touchscreen 4-finger multi-touch and gesture supporting display. That’s a mouthful.  Gestures are activated by the outer glass bezel surrounding the 7-inch, 1024 x 600 display. The introductory tutorial basically gives you the skinny; swipe from the bottom of the glass up to the screen to pull up the alt+tab style application navigator. Swipe from the top bezel down pulls in additional functionality (if built into the specific app you are in).

Size is actually quite nice. It’s large enough to know its not a smartphone, but small enough that it still fits in the back of your blue jeans pocket. I was quite impressed because it makes it more “mobile” than say, a larger 10-inch tablet.

The Playbook has quite a bit of processing power under the hood. RIM has opted for a 1 GHz dual-core processor with 1 GB RAM to run the new powerful and sexy QNX OS. This speed combined with memory will give RIM an advantage in the gaming department over the iPad’s 512 MB RAM. Increased RAM literally translates to bigger games being ported from the desktop space to the tablet space.

HD video out via micro-hdmi, comes standard, no extra dongles need to be purchased. Here’s a list of the full specs and features for your perusal;

BlackBerry PlayBook Specifications

• 7″ LCD display, 1024 x 600 screen resolution
• High resolution, WSVGA, capacitive screen with 4-finger multi-touch and gesture support
• 1 GHz dual-core processor
• BlackBerry® Tablet OS with symmetric multiprocessing
• 1 GB RAM
• Powerful, user-friendly QNX technology: It’s what the World Wide Web runs on
• True simultaneous multitasking — apps run simultaneously and in real time
• Accelerometer, 6-axis motion sensing (gyroscope) and digital compass (magnetometer)
• GPS
• Micro USB port
• Games, media, apps and all the rich content the real Internet has to offer
• Full Adobe® Flash® 10.1 enabled
• Built-in support for HTML 5
• No-compromise rendering of text, graphics and video
• 3 MP 1080p HD forward-facing camera
• 5 MP 1080p HD rear-facing camera
• Stereo speakers and stereo microphones
• Crystal clear video; H.264, MPEG4, WMV HDMI video output
• Micro HDMI port for 1080p playback
• Music Store by 7 Digital, BlackBerry® Podcast app
• Reliable BlackBerry Tablet OS, powered by QNX technology
• Supports POSIX OS, SMP, Open GL, WebKit, Adobe Flash and Adobe Mobile AIR
• 0.9 pounds/425g
• 7.6″/194mm x 5.1″/130mm x 0.4″/10mm

It weighs 0.9 pounds, lighter than the iPad, but heavier than the Galaxy Tab.

The buttons are crap. Yes, I said it and I do hope RIM will change this for the next version. I have become used to them now after 2 weeks of use, but it was no easy feat. The power button is nestled within a bevel to the left of the audio toggles. Basically here’s how you can skip two weeks of fuddling around and become a pro right off the bat. Use your left index finger only, place it on the top of the tablet edge, slide it across to the right until you hit the audio toggles, then just to the left of the first toggle press down. It’s awkward and I have yet to find any other way.

The camera’s are OK. They work, they are pixelated, slow and grainy, but this isn’t a camera-centric device anyway. It’s often blurry and video is, well, acceptable and not terrible.

Sound is quite good. The speakers are cleverly ported on the outer front edges and give you a real stereo effect.

Not as impressive as I would have imagined. I usually find it completely drained after falling asleep with say, a 60 minute mp3 playing in the background to send me off to la la land. You would think it would perform much better considering it goes into standby and disables Wi-Fi only after 5 minutes. Once you wake it, you will have to manually connect to your Wi-Fi again. A nuisance which will probably be addressed in later updates. I calculated north of 6 hours on a good “light day.”

Get used to that screen; you’ll see it frequently as the BlackBerry Tablet OS continues to improve.  But  I will say the BlackBerry Tablet OS (QNX) is the sexiest tablet OS I have seen to date. I say this from a professional standpoint, being a user interface designer myself, as well as from a consumers point of view; usability is paramount to what’s out there now. Swiping and menu bounces are all dialed in, the opacities and overlays look very clean and high-end. You know who RIM is targeted when you look at this OS. It is a first generation, so obviously there are quirks to it that I’m sure will be sorted soon. Some buttons are a pixel off and shift position when you touch, no search capabilities within the OS, apps tray shows up even when no apps are there, I have noticed small things like this but nothing too serious. Even the volume toggles require you to press them once per step up or down, you cannot just hold it to do a quick change.

I’m not a BlackBerry user so that limits me to not being able to test the full functionality of BlackBerry Bridge, but if you want to learn more read up on it. Without it you can’t send email attachments and do other BlackBerryific stuff.

The app store for BlackBerry apps. Although not loaded to the nines with flashlights, fart sound apps and 20 Angry Birds knock offs, they are slowly building up a good library. Once the Android App browser is released it should open things up plenty. Check the video at the end of this review for more on that.

The thing is blazing fast, serious. Just give the bundled Need For Speed Undercover game a run and see for yourself. I did notice some jittery after “effects” when playing the bundled Tetris game while simultaneously playing the built-in Tetris music. I would blame this on software as I can’t conceive a 1GHz processor being inadequate to perform this task.

Yes, it is a commonly advertised feature that everyone likes to shout out loud with the their thumbs hanging off their waste belts “it can multitask.” But how much multitasking is possible with the Playbook? It will vary depending on what you are doing. You can technically “run” multiple programs and have them in a suspended state for later. This kind of ruins part of the YouTube experience but not entirely. The YouTube app and MP3 Player will keep playing while you are in another app.

If you are an iPad or iPhone user you may share the same feelings as me and believe the YouTube app is crap. The BlackBerry official YouTube app is not far off, but they do actually allow you to use the traditional YouTube website to playback a freaking flic. Try this on iOS and you will get the boot into the YouTube app with entirely different search results. Yep, I’m outing you Google and Apple, you are not giving YouTube users the same search data that native web users get. But low and behold, RIM has really made an impression on me. Not only do you get flash, but you get the actual native web browser search results since you are able to access YouTube from within the “browser” and not just the “app.” This may or may not be a big deal to you, but to someone throwing a party that has a tabletized self-jockey ability enabled for guests, and to ask those guests to play songs and videos they love but only to leave them disappointed with different search results than they are used to, well, this just doesn’t go over well. Words are spoken, not nice ones, and usually about Apple. I should make a note that the BlackBerry official YouTube app also delivers different search results than the native website, but you do have the browser alternative unlike iOS.

Finally, YouTube within a browser that works on a tablet!

YouTube in the PlayBook app (meh)

iOS Search Results

Technical Support

If you have any issues with the PlayBook, setup, software, etc. you get 90 days of free support. Thereafter you must purchase an extended warranty for 2 years. It’s $129 and they say gets you “protection against drops and spills” too which is pretty good if you’re clumsy like that. Save yourself a headache though and register first before calling; if you dare do call that is. You just enter your serial number at the bottom of the support page, accept a TOS, then call in.

Once registering I got the following message: “Your BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet has been registered. Your 90-Day Complimentary Support expires on 2011-07-27, so you have 72 days remaining.” I’m wondering where the other 18 days went to since I never called in previously. Technical support said not to worry, I have 90 days. Shrug. Dont even waste your time entering serial numbers or case numbers into the phone prompts, no one gets them once you are transferred.

When you phone in the first level support has very bad English and due to RIM policy were unable to tell me where they were located. After trying to comprehend what the agent was saying, repeating and repeating over and over again, then going back and forth with another technical support agent for more than five minutes trying to determine and resolve the issue for why BlackBerry Desktop Software does not work on Mac, not to mention after recommending I download the latest PC software, they finally decided to transfer me to the next level which was about the same experience, just alot longer. I finally ended up with an email listing step by step instructions how to uninstall, reinstall and restart my computer. I am still unable to get this software to work on Mac OSX 10.6.7. I spoke to a third agent who then said he would send me more instructions and ask another higher-level of support about “configuration specifics.” Well, 30 minutes of hold and then a hangup, I got a call from Bill, the fifth and final rep who actually spoke English and let me know that the BlackBerry Desktop Software does not work for the PlayBook just yet. Anyway, to make a long annoying experience short — I believe I was the first Mac user to call in – just use Wi-Fi. Here’s the instructions thanks to Bill to setup your PlayBook share with a Wi-Fi connection

.

BlackBerry PlayBook Tips

 

If your Playbook for some reason would become frozen. Press and hold the power button down for 15 seconds, this will give it a hard restart.

To wipe out your device and start over (this literally wipes out everything) go to Settings > Security > Security Wipe. From here on you will basically revert to a new device, same startup, mandatory tutorials, etc. If you wipe you will lose Need For Speed Undercover and some crappy fake Bust-a-move game upon refreshing the OS; go to App World and get them again for free.

Playbook above China Craptablet (aka: CherryPad)

Bottom Line

This is a great tablet, it’s small, fast, the design is solid and doesn’t feel like a MIC craptablet. It’s got a great form factor, the virtual keyboard is kick ass since the size of the tablet allows you to use it as a perfect thumbboard — I think RIM thought this one through. The OS is slick and sexy, although basic and could use some “bells and whistles,” keep in mind it’s a first gen OS and wow, what a first gen. Technical support is free and not up to the Apple standard just yet. If Android portability and market support come through without any hiccups, technical support passes ESL (I did press 1 for English) RIM could have a serious game changer on their hands. Would you buy one?

The BlackBerry PlayBook is a Wi-Fi only tablet that can use your BlackBerry smartphone’s Internet connection. It is priced at $500 in 16GB capacity, with 32GB and 64GB options for $100 more each step up.

 

The post BlackBerry PlayBook Review appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

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The BlackBerry PlayBook isn’t exactly late to the party and its sales numbers from launch day are actually better than expected. But the bad news is that those sales numbers aren’t exactly huge either.

Mike Abramsky is the General Manager over at RBC Capital Markets and he estimates that RIM managed to sell about 50,000 PlayBook tablets on launch day, including pre-order sales. That’s more than what some analysts had predicted and, if the number holds true, it means the PlayBook did better on launch day than the Motorola Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

However, we can also put these numbers in some stunning perspective. You know about a little company called Apple? Yeah, they pushed out half a million iPad 2 tablets on the first day. That’s ten times what RIM was able to achieve. We can take that comparison for what it’s worth, but there you have it.

In my brief time with the PlayBook at CES earlier this year, I must say that I was impressed with the true multitasking and the slickness of the QNX framework. It’s far from perfect, but the PlayBook should be able to hold its own in the increasingly popular tablet world. Stay tuned for a full review once we’ve put it through the ringer.

The post BlackBerry PlayBook Launch Day Sales Figures Better Than Expected appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

If 2010 was the year of the Android smartphone, 2011 is going to be the year of the tablet… but it’s not just about the iPad vs. Android when it comes to tablets. Some people may say they’re a little late to the party, but Research in Motion is finally ready to join the fight with its BlackBerry PlayBook.

After all sorts of vague mentions regarding pricing and availability, the Waterloo-based firm has finally come forth with something firm. First, they’re saying that the PlayBook will be available through Best Buy and Future Shop stores starting on April 19. That’s a little less than a month away and should be able to compete quite nicely against Honeycomb offerings.

Second, as expected, the Wi-Fi only PlayBook will ship in three different capacities. The 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB models will sell for $499, $599, and $699 respectively (at least in the United States). This puts it right on par with the iPad equivalents, as well as the recently announced pricing of the WiFi-only Motorola Xoom.

I think I like the new QNX-based operating system, but I’m not sure that I would choose it over iOS or Honeycomb just yet. It’s also a bit of a shame that the PlayBook doesn’t have its own cellular connection, relying instead on a tethered connection through a BlackBerry (or a Wi-Fi hotspot).

You can start placing your pre-orders right now through Best Buy and Future Shop, but in the meantime, you can check out the preview video posted by Miranda of Rogers RedBoard.

The post BlackBerry PlayBook to Ship April 19, Pre-Orders Now appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

What great news for Sprint customers. Today down the CES vine came word that RIM and Sprint will be offering the BlackBerry Playbook “in the summer.” Now we’re hoping July the latest, but you never know, it could be as early as the end of June. We were expecting a 4G PlayBook (Sprint claims 10x faster than 3G) release in the first quarter of 2011, however, a rumored less than acceptable battery life may have caused the release date to be pushed back to this summer. No word on price just yet.

[Sprint 4G PlayBook page]

The post Sprint to get 4G BlackBerry Playbook “this summer” appeared first on Mobile Magazine.