On the heels of the Samsung’s Galaxy Tab appearance, RIM has released their own tablet device called the ‘Playbook.’
RIM said the Playbook will be released sometime in 2011. No prices have been set, but here are the specs as people have heard:
- 7 Inch Screen
- Flash capable video
- Front (3MP) and rear (5MP) high-definition (1080p) camera
- 1 GHz dual core processor
- 1 GB of RAM
- HDMI video output
- Bluetooth enabled
- 9.7mm thick and weighs just 0.9 pounds
The Playbook will be enterprise ready meaning you’ll be able to integrate it with a Blackberry Enterprise Server out of the box which of course includes RIM’s push capabilities.
Interestingly, RIM will not be utilizing their newly launched Blackberry 6 operating system, but rather the RTOS (Real Time OS) developed by QNX who RIM acquired in April of this year.
Is there any use for this within the IT field? Would you use this for your ministry? I know that pretty much every hardcore IT guy has a RIM-device (or had one for a while) so this might be the next step in the addictive drug of “crackberries”.
Maybe not?
I think we still need to see the apps, the hardware is great, I think QNX is maybe the key here, with such a powerfull OS on such great hardware, I think we’ll be seeing some big apps running on the PlayBook next year.
You left out the USB port from the spec sheet.
Boasting the Blackberry class enterprise security is a huge win as well. The only issues I see is that they haven’t announced the GPU yet and the lack of 3G or 4G connectivity and when you look at that in a different light it’s really not so bad. It will tether to a Blackberry phone via Bluetooth, this means it’s not locked to a carrier and if you travel globally and have a global ready Blackberry, you can surf the web from this anywhere.