ipad does not have flash player, but since flash is no longer being developed by Adobe for mobile devices its only a matter of time until its gone from all the others. I have an iphone, and my sister an ipad, and we dont have any issues with internet sites. Most have non flash alternatives that are used when running on an ipad / iphone , or there is an iphone / ipad app that allows access (eg. youtube) and these apps are free usually.

I decided to buy one last night. £170 from Currys was the best price I found, complete with a free case (too big) and Norton Tablet Security (which doesn't run on Blackberry). Seems alright so far, the multitasking is more capable than Android tablets I've seen (dual core CPU vs single core probably mostly responsible for that, but I think the OS is more geared for it as well). Some software seems woefully absent (Skype would be nice for example as there's a reasonable front-facing camera, but it doesn't exist) but I haven't tried putting any Android apps on it yet so some of it could be got around that way. Everything else seems to work alright, although Google's Activesync implementation is a bit wonky with deleting emails so that might be a pain in the arse.

Seems a fairly solid little device though so far. The screen seems a bit smaller than my Dad's HTC Flyer (which he bought recently and started me off looking at tabs again) but I might just be imagining it. The resolution is the same so even if physical screen size is slightly smaller it won't really affect the use.

edit - Hmmm. May not be Google's Activesync after all. Since I attached the Playbook to my work email (Exchange 2007), I've got a folder full of Exchange synchronisation logs. Admittedly they all say "Exchange is currently busy" so it might not be anything to do with the Playbook, but it's a bit of a coincidence.

Edited 24 February, 201214 yr by gac

I'd have spent the extra on the Flyer tbh... I have had a few goes on a playbook but not really too impressed. I think the OS is it's main limiting factor... would have to be Android for me.

Phil

I was never interested in it before as it lacked too many basic features like email (unless you had a Blackberry phone, which I don't). I've had a go on a Flyer but that never really grabbed me, it's running the same version of Android as my phone (2.3) but somehow it didn't feel right on the larger tablet. Being fair, Gingerbread was never designed for tablets, but my dad's Flyer didn't seem to have a Honeycomb upgrade available and I don't think it's getting Ice Cream Sandwich either. Whereas the Playbook OS itself has been specifically designed for that tablet, so I think it's more suited. Now the apps for the basics have come along I reckon it'll do the job for casual email/web/Facebook anyway. And if not, I can probably sell it on without losing too much cos it's still a step above just about all the £100 cheap tablets.

Honeycomb has been released (officially) for the flyer and ICS is on it's way.

Agreed the Playbook is still much much better than the cheapo Archos etc tablets.

Phil

And still better than anything else. That's how bad the rest of the tablet market is.

Got to agree, I am anything but an apple fan boy, and wanted a galaxy tab 10.1 when in the states last year, but the iPad is so well made, so solid in comparison to the Tab it was a no brainer and coupled with the app store it was a no brainer. iPad is certainly not over priced when compared to some of the other other junk that's been thrown out against it either. my iPad 2 was the same price as the galaxy tab 10.1 when I bought it (32GB WiFi) and is a solid feeling slate, whereas when using the tab it felt pretty flimsy.

I'm one of the first to knock Apple, but even though I really do hate to say it, the iPad is a class act and still ahead in the tablet stakes.

Strange. My dad's was definitely still on Gingerbread and wasn't reporting any software updates. I wonder if it's not available OTA? I might nip round and install it for him, I need to arse around setting up his GApps email account anyway so might see if it's available and start off with a total wipe and fresh installation of Honeycomb.

First few days of the Playbook haven't been too bad. The GPS doesn't seem to work though (at least not indoors near a window, although my phone always does), so I need to see if there's any kind of GPS test app. Phones generally have an easier time of GPS in my experience as they have phone tower coordinates and WiFi network location to get a rough idea of the location before even turning the GPS receiver on, so it could just be that since the Playbook lacks that it's struggling. Not that it really matters since I bought the WiFi version and probably won't be using it on the move, but it should work!

Only had a quick browse through the App World, and it does seem pretty sparse in there. The new OS has been out for a week, and given the ease at which RIM reckon Android stuff can be converted/recompiled/whatever it is that happens hopefully there'll be an increase in native stuff in there soon otherwise I'll look into one of the methods of getting the Android Market on there and I think that'll let me just download Android apps as I would on an Android device.

Most importantly, Briskoda seems to work pretty well (if a little slowly) in the standard Webkit browser

ipad does not have flash player, but since flash is no longer being developed by Adobe for mobile devices its only a matter of time until its gone from all the others. I have an iphone, and my sister an ipad, and we dont have any issues with internet sites. Most have non flash alternatives that are used when running on an ipad / iphone , or there is an iphone / ipad app that allows access (eg. youtube) and these apps are free usually.

HTML5 will be the way forward :-) Have to agree with the comments on browsing, the days of frustrating iPad browsing are largely gone these days.

It's definitely available as an OTA for the Flyer. Was playing with one in currys the other week and it was reporting of an available update. I clicked install and it proceeded to download/install the update. I went in the week after and sure enough it was now running Honeycomb.

There's a guide here about how to sideload android apps onto it:

http://crackberry.com/how-sideload-android-apps-playbook-os-v20-use-android-app-player

Very strange then. Will have to check that out, whenever I next get around to visiting the 'rents. That guide looks useful as well, might have a go at that tonight and get some of the apps on that I'm missing while I wait to see if they turn up natively, cheers

@GAC - reading your review/comments with interest. I have been interested in some form of tablet for sometime now but haven't been brave enough to take the plunge. Run a Blackberry (for work) and don't have a iPhone, although I do have an iPod Touch (which I must admit is very good, I just use it for music storage purposes and nothing else really).

Have been interested in the Playbook purely and simply because of the link with my BB phone (using BB Bridge App), the fact it's not an iPad ( ) and it's price point.

Keep us posted with your findings

As I suspected, so far I've hardly used it (which was my main reason for wanting a cheapy-cheap tablet, the iPad costs more than my PC did!). Points I've noticed so far:

It has Facebook integration (which is sort of good, saves me keeping my phonebook manually up to date). However, you can't select what gets synced. I only want contact details, but I also have to have birthdays and messages as well. So at any one time, there's hundreds of unread "messages" in the Playbook messaging app. These are all Facebook Chat messages (which they insist on handling in the same way as "email" messages) that I could have had on my desktop at work but that show up as unread. Ideally, I wouldn't want Facebook messages showing up, so that when it flashed for a new message I knew it was actually an email. It's not possible in the current iteration though, hopefully they do it in future.

Some of the shortcuts are actually just shortcuts to web apps (Twitter for example). It has some level of native Twitter (in the sense that you can link a "real" contact for someone to their Twitter name and then you can see their updates in the Contacts app. But then to actually use Twitter you have to use the website (which to be fair seems good on mobiles). It makes some parts of the Playbook feel a bit disjointed and still half-finished (if you've gone to the trouble of writing a Contacts app with Twitter support why not reuse some of the code and also make yourself a real Twitter app?). Ditto the BBC News and iPlayer shortcuts, they just link to the websites. Although being fair, iPlayer does work pretty well.

I got a PB last week - 32GB, with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth,E-Book reader (Kobo), Flash support, Skype etc. OS 2.0 loads automatically as soon as you switch on in range of a live wireless router/modem.

Opinion:

Screen display is razor sharp (Miles better than my 9 year old Packard Bell laptop).

Graphical interface is nice design and has fast application and web access (Apparently faster than IPAD).

Boot takes longer than my Desktop ! So what I do is switch-off the Wi-fi and put it in standby (Screen-off). This saves the battery and then it only takes three discrete "Gestures" to wake it up and get Wi-fi re-established.

I used a quarter of the battery reserve at first use and the re-charged using the supplied charger - took about just over an hour (there is a fast charger that cuts that time in half for £25, but its alleged that battery life is halved with consistent use of this device ?). Apparently the USB cable that comes with it won't allow charging to take place ?

Access to E-mail is hyper convenient and fast - makes the Outlook 2010 running on my desktop look likes its clockwork (And thats a quad-core athlon on an Asus M488TD-M Evo, 8GB Ram, 500GB Seagate disk, running windows 7 64). Similarly with the MS Office "Operate-a-like" "Documents-to-go". Very quick and easy to originate or recall documents created there.

Both the cameras are first rate and there's no stuttering, hestitation or missed frames in video. Same with streaming from the web - I dont think even the IPAD is that good. Sound from the speakers is good - haven't tried the headphones. Microphone is good, speach recognition is built-in seems to do OK (Tested with the OBAMA quote game).

GPS receiver is the only possible weak point. i've only managed to secure a GPS signal once over the last five days whilst using it indoors - whereas my Blackberry Curve and Garmin have no problem acquiring GPS indoors.

Blackberry App world have several tens of "Android like" apps for download and installation. Including one which for a £10 allows you to cache to disk high definition/quality maps of countries. Because they have been cached you can use them when your outside the footprint of Wi-Fi, as long, of course, as you can get GPS.

Installing the Blackberry Bridge enables you to control the PB from your blackberry phone (Any Bluetooth equipped phone ?). That might be good for business people doing on-the-hoof ad hoc presentations to one or two people. I also bought a Bluetooth USB stick, attached it to the Desktop and used the Blackberry Curve phone to control the Desktop ! - Starting apps and everything.

As said previously, the version 1.00 OS was rooted last year and allowed you to side-load Android market - allegedly that enabled you to download and install the android version of Kindle. I don't want to root my machine whilst its under guarentee and reports are that Blackberry are detecting rooted machines when updates to Blackberry software are installed and are taking on-going action to block each vulnerability as it is revealed. Apparently, once version 1.0 machines had been rooted, Android marketplace could be loaded. I'll keep a watch on the Crackberry site to see what's developing for version 2.0.

There is, of course, a Blackberry version of kindle available on the US Amazon site, but when I tried to access it using my own Amazon US account, it kept referring me back to the UK (where my original Amazon account resides).

I deleted some of the default games, faceache and twizzle from the disk and liberated lots more space.

An added advantage for me is that being a BT Broadband customer at home i've signed up to BT FON. The initial difficulties I was having with this now seem to have resolved so i should be able to look foward to "Cost-free" roaming web browsing in the UK and near continent.

The whole thing only weighs in at substantially less than a bag of sugar (i.e. < 2lbs) and the screen measures 7" on the diagonal. For that reason, I regard it as highly portable and something that I would consider popping in a day sack for a day's outing - certainly wouldn't do that with the laptop which must be nearly 10lbs.

I'll have to take it outside this week and see what the screen is like in bright light and whether GPs reception improves.

With access to android with version 2.00 OS and the imminent release of Windows 8, the possibility in the not too distant future of rooting version 2.00 OS and Kindle for UK Blackberry's, the PB could come evolve into a very useful cross-platform device.

Otherwise, quite impressed and pleased with the purchase.

Nick

Edited 3 March, 201214 yr by Clunkclick

From a technical standpoint I agree. Its dual-core CPU and QNX operating system seems to do multitasking MUCH better than single-core Android devices (such as my phone, which for all intents and purposes is a Flyer with a small screen). App support is lacking a bit, I'd like to use it to control my XBMC machine, there's a great app for Android but the Blackberry native equivalents are rubbish. I need to see if there are any plans to convert the existing Android app for it.

Still barely used mine, I think I'm just not a "tablet" person after all and that all my mobile computing needs are served by my HTC mobile phone, realistically.

I can see that i'm going to use mine quite a bit now that I'm a man of leisure at home, if only for the fact that I can tout it round the house with me and it saves powering up the desktop twice a day too pick-up and reply to e-mails - it seems that with wi-fi turned off and standby mode selected it consumes next to no power.

Postscript

Two weeks down the ownership line and a couple of minor triumphs to report.

Managed to get the GPS compass going following an application upgrade -I think about 50% of the Apps in BBC App World were and are not OS 2.0 ready and therefore either don't work or malfunction.

The GPS is still not good for moving maps - I suspect that it's just a software problem

Also managed to convert x 3 of my Kindle E-Books into MS Word format and now reading

Them using the Doc-To-Go application (Pop-Up keyboard turned off). That's one-in-the-eye for Amazon who have released Kindle for BBC smartphones stateside, but refuse to issue the application over here.

Surprisingly, the rendering of converted Kindle files converts to PDF wasn't as good as to Doc format.

And it would only convert the first few pages, whereas I got the full 400 pages in Doc.

What I am finding annoying is intermittmently acting predictive typing which pops up when I post on a site like this. There are occasions when its getting a good 40% of the words wrong.!

Nick

Edited 12 March, 201214 yr by Clunkclick