The Blackberry Playbook has been out for almost 2 years now. Despite this, many owners are still waiting to get a taste of BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) on the device. Right now, if you own a Blackberry smartphone and a Playbook, you can download Blackberry Bridge. This allows you to pair your tablet and smartphone as well as use BBM from your tablet.

However, a native BBM app is yet to be released for the tablet. For those of you still waiting, BBOTA.cn recently spotted screenshots of what looks to be a native BBM app for the Playbook. Take a look:

Blackberry is not scheduled to make any announcements until their January 30th Blackberry 10 launch. If BBM for Playbook isn’t released by then, it might be time to give up.

Stay tuned at Mobile Magazine for updates on Blackberry 10 and a possible BBM for Playbook app in the coming weeks or month.

Do you have a Blackberry Playbook? Have you been waiting for a native BBM app? Let us know in the comments below.

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Let’s face it, RIM isn’t exactly everyone’s favorite brand anymore and the first time around the company found little success with its Playbook tablet. Now, more than a year later than originally announced, RIM has brought us the 4G LTE-enabled Blackberry Playbook Tablet. According to MobileSyrup, an internal document from the Canadian mobile service, Bell, indicates that on July 31^st the tablet will be launching at a suspected price point of $549.95. As for the US and the rest of the world, it’s hard to say for sure. Keep in mind that there is really little different, hardware-wise, from the original Playbook with the exception of a 4G LTE antenna. For those that don’t remember, the Playbook was a pretty big flop at its original price point and really didn’t pick up at all until it was sold at a major reduction in a sort of firesale effort.

The Playbook 4G LTE model will have OS2.0, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, a 7-inch display with a 1024×600 resolution, 1GB RAM, 5MP rear camera that shoots 1080p HD video, 3MP front-facing camera, 4800mAh battery and will have only a 32GB storage option. The specs aren’t actually half-bad on the Playbook, but RIM hasn’t exactly been a major name of late. Perhaps the company hopes that through contract subsidiary pricing users will pick up the Playbook for $0-$99 prices on two year contracts? What do you think, too little too late on RIM’s part or are you glad that the 4G LTE model is finally on its way?

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There are all kinds of rumors swirling around that Google is preparing a self-branded Android tablet, but apparently it’s not joining the Nexus family. Instead, it could be called the Google “Play” tablet. I imagine the boys and girls in Waterloo aren’t very happy about that, but at the same time, they’ve got some much bigger fish to fry at the moment.

It seems that Google has gone around and registered a number of domain names that have the word “play” in them. This might have to do with the tablet, or perhaps some sort of new software related to it, or maybe it has to do with something else entirely. What we do hear is that production could start as early as next month and the “Play” tablet could be a 7-incher preloaded with ICS. I wonder how Amazon feels about that.

The post Google’s Rumored “Play” Android Tablet Takes Bite Out of BB PlayBook appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The new info comes via a webcast about “Developing native games with the BlackBerry NDK 2.0″, during which RIM announced that they are “planning on releasing OS 2.0 on the 21st”. So it’s finally going to arrive. Hopefully there won’t be any problems associated with the rollout.

The 2.0 upgrade is coming with some much needed features including native e-mail, calendars, and contacts apps. As these features were not available when the tablet launched, users were forced to find solutions such as connecting their BlackBerry handsets to their PlayBooks.

You will also get to play with a few Android apps, but the bad news is that the BlackBerry Messenger app will still be missing. Also expected is an updated version of Bridge (BlackBerry Bridge 2.0) which will allow you to remotely control your PlayBook via your BlackBerry smartphone.

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Research in Motion had a tough 2011, their troubles are far from being over, and it has become such daunting task to lead the company in its current state, that co-CEOs, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have finally jumped off the sinking ship.  The company has announced the two are stepping down, while Thorsten Heins, currently RIM’s COO of Product Engineering, will take over as the new CEO; Heins believes he can stop the ship from sinking.

Both Lazaridis and Balsillie, who have been heading up the company for two decades, will still be on board though. Lazaridis will stay as vice chair of the board while Balsillie will be an ordinary director.  And they seem to be fully confident that Heins will be able to make things right. But it’s definitely not going to be easy for him.

Just to refresh your memory, the BlackBerry PlayBook turned out to be a painful experience for the company after it was released a couple of months back. They had to go through all sorts of trouble, including software glitches, price drops, massive competition, lack of apps and the list goes on. The big outage that came in October and the lawsuit over the use of BBX added to the agony. And the company’s market share is going down as iOS and Android are becoming more and more popular.

But still, Heins has high hopes. He believes that “everything is in place for the company to grow”. One of the first steps that he will be taking as the company’s head will be hiring a Chief Marketing Officer to make sure that the BlackBerry brand remains popular.

Check out the video to learn more about Heins’ ideas.

The post BlackBerry Down 2 VPs: Heins To Save Sinking Ship appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

It appears like the PlayBook sales during the holiday season didn’t quite go as planned for RIM. In what seems to be a very desperate move, the company has started offering all models of the tablet with a price tag of $299 on their online store.

Earlier, the company set the beginning price point at $199 for the 16GB model. Now, both the 32GB and the 64GB PlayBooks are available for the same price as the 16GB tablet.

Although the tablet is not that cool when we consider the availability of applications and security features and all, the new deal appears to be a good one if you are already stuck with a BlackBerry.

But you better make it quick if you want to play with the 64GB version as that deal is the most attractive and it’s not known whether there are enough of them available and I couldn’t imagine them selling many 16GB models with this offer.

The price cut from RIM is certainly not a surprise. The company’s recent earnings report suggests that the PlayBook’s popularity is decreasing and the only way to make people interested in the flawed tablet is with a discount.

RIM will be offering the tablet for the new price until February 4. As you might know, the PlayBook OS 2.0 is scheduled to hit devices sometime in the coming month. The new PlayBook fire sale could be a planned attack to move as many units as possible into people’s hands ahead of the update.

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Jonathan S. Geller of BGR quoting unnamed sources at Research In Motion, paints a very troubling picture about the development of RIM’s new BlackBerry 10 OS, new phones and the overall state of the company. Insider sources claim to have contacts at high level management of the company supposedly tell that a reason of BlackBerry 10 OS delay is not the lack of LTE chipset, or development for it, it’s the sad state of BlackBerry 10 itself; that has not email application, nor BBM, the messenger that was responsible more than anything for RIM’s success in its BlackBerry line of phones.

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Following the succesful penetration of Dingleberry Team into bastions of Blackberry Playbooks, the Spanish blog eltecnoblog.com has posted a demo of the exploit for turning on the HOST mode in Blackberry Playbook’s USB port; commonly known as USB On-The-Go (OTG) connection to a host computer for sideloading and other simple tasks.

The instructions for anyone willing to repeat the feat on their Playbooks are promised for the later date. But in any case, the exploit is very important. Blackberry Playbok has no external SD slot, so basically if you have purchased a 16 GB unit at some store where “fire” sales of these are going for $199, then that’s it, 16GB of storage is all you’ve got.

Sure, you can do some sideloading and replacing your old HD flicks with new ones using an original, stock OTG connection to your computer, but it’s a hassle. Using a USB flash stick is much more convenient. When powered from its AC adapter, the Blackberry Playbook might even connect to 2.5″ hard drives in mobile powered enclosures.

A Blackberry Playbook can work with Bluetooth keyboards and mice out of the box, and professional customers like the feature. This time, “regular” USB keyboards and mice can work. Remote printing over WiFi is fine and elegant, but there are tons of “regular” USB printers that can be reached by Playbook now.

Putting peripheral connectivity aside, this development is very significant for all those tinkerers who dream to put Ice Cream Sandwich on this cheap, but very powerful and versatile device. Sure, initial probes and rooting has been accomplished without the USB HOST feature activated and they might continue without it. The ease of use of just a flash stick makes this tinkering much more attractive.

It’s unclear at the moment whether or not the unveiling of a USB HOST mode will survive a security update roll-out, or OS upgrade to 2.0, but the accomplishment is great.

The post Hack: Adding Storage To Blackberry Playbook With USB HOST Mode 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.

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You know how we heard QNX still doesn’t support BES? I guess one way around that is to create yet another operating system and that’s exactly what the Waterloo crew have decided to do, today announcing the next-generation BBX OS for BlackBerry smartphone and tablet devices.

Mike Lazaridis, who is still recovering from the recent BlackBerry outage, took the stage at RIM’s app developer conference to announce the new development. Basically, BBX is a middle ground between QNX and the company’s usual BB OS stream.  After apologizing for the outage and offering $100 in premium app downloads to those affected, Lazaridis continued.

Research in Motion is encouraging developers to create their games using HTML5, since that’s supported by QNX, as well as older platforms like BlackBerry OS 5 and OS6. This way, they can code once and deploy everywhere. There’s also something called Cascades, which is a native UI framework built into BBX, giving developers access to low-level APIs.

On the Enterprise side, unlike pure QNX, BBX should fully support BES. What’s more, enterprise apps can get their own shelf in App World and they would then be hosted by a company’s BES (and be undeletable by employees). There’s also something called BlackBerry Balance that will provide a “corporate partition” for separating BES (work) stuff from the rest of your life.

There was a brief moment discussing how BBX will support the Android Runtime.  A demo was later shown to developers in the Technical Session, but a simple app with menus was just ported.

Even though it’s yet another OS for RIM to handle, BBX could be the unifying factor to help minimize fragmentation and hopefully improve profits for BB app developers. Until we get some more details (like screenshots and demo videos), we’ll have to reserve judgement.

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