My New BlackBerry Playbook

 

At last I got my BlackBerry Playbook last saturday and was so excited to use it, and "bridge" it with my BlackBerry Bold 9780.

I've been using a Motorola Xoom for a while now and I have no complaints about it even up to now. I love the size of the screen of the Motorola Xoom. Whenever I'm out, I have with me, the Motorola Xoom, the LG Optimus One where a SUN Cellular Postpaid line is hooked up to, and this is what I use to connect the Xoom to the internet using Android's Mobile Router feature or the wireless tethering function. And of course, my trusty messenger, the BlackBerry Bold 9780 which is using a Globe Postpaid SIM with BlackBerry Internet Service. 

I'm not saying that I am not getting enough from what I'm paying Globe Telecoms with my unlimited data of BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS), but with the BlackBerry Playbook, I mean, I can still do more. 

I love the Playbook for it's simplicity, this is what RIM is known for, they know how an "exclusive class" should look like. And one look at the Playbook will tell you right away of it's snooty-ness genre.

It's so plain and elegant that there are very few things that will break the continuous lines of the device. Ports at the bottom are the microHDMI, microUSB (which can be used for charging) and the propriatory port which is used with a dock. 

At the top there's the 3.5mm headphone jack (i would want it at the bottom just in case I use it with a car mount and no wires will be dangling all over the dashboard), the 4 flushed buttons (3 media buttons - volume up and down + the play/pause) and the power/standby button. And at the opposite side of the heasphone jack is the tiny hole for the microphone. 

On the sides of the screen are two speakers (stereo I think).

The screen is awesome, although small compared to the Motorola Xoom, but your eyes won't get strained while looking at it. One might think that the bezel is too think for the device, well, that's because those are touch-sensitive areas where "gestures" to control the device originates.

Originally there are 4 tabs for the applications: All, Favorites, Media and Games, but another tab is added, the BlackBerry Bridge tab, when the device is "paired" with a BlackBerry phone (OS5, OS6 and OS7 supported).

I'm very impressed at how almost immediate the notifications are. After hearing the alert from the phone, I check the Playbook and there it is, either the upper left corner is glowing (when you're on another application) or the notification icon appears. A bit of a warning though, Bridge will only give you alerts for BBM and emails messages, SMS and other application alerts doesn't happen on the Playbook.

The virtual keyboard is fun to use, but coming from the Motorola Xoom, I found it minuscule at first, but decided to do thumb-typing instead and everything now is a breeze.

One disappointment is the "selective" roll out of BlackBerry apps (the ones developed by RIM). It doesn't have the Podcasts and BlackBerry News app and I cannot download it from the App Store since it's not available in my region (PHILIPPINES).

Although some other disappointments are the lack of a native Twitter app (the one included is just a shortcut to the Twitter website), though a native Facebook app is included. Then there's the lack of instant messaging or video calling apps like Skype or GTalk. Not everyone has a BlackBerry Playbook to use the VideoCalling app. I have yet to test the AIM A/V app, hopefully it'll be my stopgap app until decent apps (if ever they come) are developed.

The Playbook is one multi-tasker if I might say, I opened up 5 tasks and still it works.

Here are pictures of my very new toy, a 16GB BlackBerry Playbook.

As you can see, the Xoom is humongous compared to the Playbook or the Playbook is minuscule compared to the Xoom.