By TAN KIT HOONGintech@thestar.com.my
RIM's first Tablet has an intuitive interface and buttery smooth performance, but not without some issues.
THANKS to the Apple iPad, the bar has been set pretty high on Tablet computers and, in my opinion, it's not because of the hardware as much as how intuitive the touchscreen interface is.
Granted, I haven't seen the latest Ice Cream Sandwich Android operating system, but the ones that run the older non-Tablet-optimised Android versions (like the Samsung Galaxy Tab) are just a bit clunky with their touch interface.
Yes, people who know me know that I'm very hard to please when it comes to ease-of-use in a graphical user interface - when it comes to cameras, PCs, phones or Tablets, it's more about how easy it is to use than how much firepower is under the hood.
So why this long preamble?
Well, it's so you understand that I'm not simply just talking out of my behind when I say that the BlackBerry PlayBook has an interface that rivals the iPad in intuitiveness and ease of use.
That's not to say that the PlayBook is perfect - it does have issues, but these issues take nothing away from the fact that RIM has crafted a touch-based interface that is both different from Apple and yet is just as easy to use.
Have I managed to get your attention yet? Good, now read on for the complete lowdown :-)
Holding a book
In terms of size, the PlayBook, with its 7in (1,024 x 600-pixel) screen is modelled after a Moleskine notebook. In fact, according to the designers, the Moleskine notebook was the primary inspiration for the PlayBook's shape and size.
Just like the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the PlayBook is a lot easier to slip into a handbag (or a manbag, as the case may be), though the smaller screen does come with some usability issues which I will deal with later.
The PlayBook is very symmetrical and very minimalist in design - there is no Home button and the only buttons on the device are the power, volume up and down and the play/pause button on the top edge.
On the bottom is a micro HDMI output, a micro USB charge and sync port and a magnetic charging port for the optional cradle or travel charger.
My one complaint right off the bat is that the power button is very, very small - it's very hard to press unless you're using your fingernail.
Now this isn't really a problem when switching it on because in sleep mode at least, the PlayBook can be brought to life with a vertical swipe from the bottom of the black frame surrounding the screen to the top.
However, there is no swipe gesture to enter sleep mode and therefore requires that you press the power button on the top or just leave the PlayBook to go to sleep by itself.
One very pleasant surprise is that the PlayBook has a pair of front-facing stereo speakers on edge of the display, which means that not only do you get stereo, but the speakers are in the best position for the best audio possible.
On the iPad for example, you only get a single, mono speaker and it's blasting backwards, which is not really ideal when you want to hear things clearly at lower volumes.
Swipe and flick
When you turn on the PlayBook for the first time, the device will walk you through the setup as well as some of the gestures you'll need to know before you can use the device.
This is especially important because the PlayBook has no physical buttons for navigating around in the interface - there's no Home button to take you back to the main screen for example.
However, the PlayBook makes up for it by having one of the most intuitive gesture-based interfaces I've ever seen.
The first thing you need to understand is that the black frame that surrounds the actual display is also capacitive and it is utilised in the PlayBook's gesture-based system.
For example, you wake the device up from sleep by swiping from the bottom edge of the screen to the top. This swipe also works to send any application you have running into the multitasking menu and take you back to the Home screen.
In the multitasking menu, which sits above the application screen, you can then flick left or right through your running applications, and if you want to close an app for good, just tap and flick it upwards and away.
Below this multitasking menu is the Home screen itself which should be familiar to BlackBerry smartphone users - it looks almost exactly like a larger version of the one on the BlackBerry.
Swiping downwards from the top of the frame to the bottom brings up context menus in an app.
Once you get used to this system, you'll really learn to appreciate how good the system is - it's certainly almost totally different from how things work on the iPad, but it's no less easy to use and in some ways, more intuitive.
There are also the more common multitouch gestures - when you open the Photos application, you can browse images by flicking left and right, and also zoom in and out with a pinching motion.
In fact, there are a few not so obvious gestures - swiping diagonally upwards will bring up the virtual keyboard and swiping diagonally downwards while in other applications will show the PlayBook status bar (power, WiFi signal strength, time, etc).
RIM uses a nice high-resolution 1,024 x 600-pixel 7in IPS panel for the PlayBook and I have to say it's gorgeous. Colours are vibrant and viewing angles are excellent so there's really little to complain about in this department.
The only problem is that the 7in display does have some drawbacks - it's good enough for web browsing (especially with the ability to zoom into columns like on the iPad) and for e-book reading, but not quite large enough for reading, say a magazine or a comic book without zooming in.
This is a problem with all 7in Tablets of course, and it's not limited to the PlayBook.
The built-in 5-megapixel camera produces very good quality photos and can shoot 1080p videos, while the front-facing 3-megapixel camera can be used for video chat.
Unfortunately, the video chat isn't available across platforms, so it only works with other BlackBerry users... at least until a Skype video chat application makes it to the PlayBook.
One thing about the PlayBook's QNX operating system is that it's incredibly smooth and responsive - coupled with the robust hardware and the capacitive screen, all your taps, pinches and flicks respond quickly and smoothly.
Video playback for example, is especially smooth - the system handles 1080p video playback with no problems, and even when you send it into the multitasking menu where it appears as a thumbnail, the video continues to play without skipping.
In fact, the PlayBook is actually powerful enough to handle mirroring of the display on a HDTV via the micro HDMI port and even output 1080p video to an HDTV.
The WebKit-based browser on the PlayBook is also similarly fast and responsive and has a major trick up its sleeve - it comes with full Adobe Flash support, which means that all webpages with Flash content will display as they should.
Apparently Adobe helped to optimise Flash for the PlayBook and most of the time performance was noticeably snappier in performance compared with Android devices.
However, when it comes to playing Flash video, the PlayBook does slow down somewhat - to the point where the whole browser becomes unresponsive for a few seconds and tapping on a button onscreen will have no response until a few more seconds after that.
Occasionally, opening too many applications will cause the the last app you are trying to open to spontaneously shut down - I had a situation an app refused to open until I closed a few apps in the background.
One would think that the operating system would be smart enough to automatically close the oldest app in the list to make way for the app you want to open, but this does not seem to be the case.
Another area I thought was confusing was the glowing red LED - the red LED on the PlayBook is actually an alert for a variety of issues - ranging from low-battery, charging to running low on memory.
It is the last one that got me stumped - I occasionally got a red blinking LED when trying to open Flash videos to tell me I was running low on memory, but I thought it was just the device running low on power.
It has to be said that RIM is constantly pushing updates to the PlayBook - in the time I had it, the operating system has been updated twice so it's likely that some of these issues will have been solved by the time it's actually available for sale in Malaysia.
The most glaring omission from the PlayBook is a lack of a native offline e-mail application - if you look at the applications list you'll see what looks like Gmail, Yahoo! and Hotmail apps, but these are merely shortcut links that bring you the web browser.
The other way to get e-mail on the PlayBook is if you have the Bridge application on the PlayBook and an existing BlackBerry smartphone - with the application, you can connect the smartphone to the PlayBook via Bluetooth and all your BlackBerry e-mail, contacts, calendar, tasks and memos will appear on the PlayBook.
Break the connection, however and those apps are greyed out and no longer accessible on the PlayBook.
RIM promises that native e-mail, contacts, calendar, tasks and memo applications will make it into the PlayBook with an operating system update sometime after June. For now, though, you'll have to make do with accessing your e-mail online only, using the web browser.
Another thing that takes some getting used to is the software keyboard - while it is perfectly usable, the Backspace key is located right under the "P" on the keyboard and I'd often find myself hitting "P" when I intended to hit the backspace key and vice versa.
It would have been more better if the Backspace key was spaced a little further down in a more isolated position to minimise accidentally hitting it.
In terms of apps, the App World on the PlayBook hasn't got many apps but there are a few, including a native Facebook app as well as EA's Need For Speed game, optimised for the PlayBook.
Obviously, these will increase over time, but for right now, you'll get only a small selection of applications to install on the device.
One feature that could turn out to be huge for the PlayBook is that RIM has also announced that the PlayBook will be updated to support Android applications.
This means that instead of waiting for PlayBook-specific apps, users can run many of the thousands of Android applications already available for the operating system.
We'll only know how the Android support works on the PlayBook when the update is pushed out some time after June.
Battery life is nothing much to write about - I got about five to six hours using it with WiFi on, surfing, playing videos and other stuff.
The one problem I found is that even when the device is on sleep mode with the screen off, the power drain is still quite drastic.
For example, I had it fully charged in the morning, and used it for about two hours and then had it on sleep the rest of the day and by about 1am in the morning, the PlayBook was giving me low battery warnings.
The only way to avoid this is to fully shut down the PlayBook when you're not using it, but this isn't an ideal solution as the device takes more than a minute to boot up from its fully powered-down state.
I have to hand it to RIM - the interface of the PlayBook is easy to understand and navigating around in it is very intuitive with its flicks and swipes. Business users should also find the robust operating system and security that's inherent in all RIM products comforting.
Right now, though, it feels like the PlayBook was rushed to market - one feels that it needs a few more updates before it will be fully cooked.
Nevertheless, what we already have on the device right now is actually a solid piece of work for web browsing and some gaming.
Pros: Nice size; smooth graphics and performance overall; stereo speakers; built-in micro HDMI output.
Cons: Flash sometimes slows down the performance; lack of e-mail native application for now; some small issues need to be fixed.
(Research In Motion)
PROCESSOR: Cortex A9-based, dual-core 1GHz CPU
MEMORY: 1GB RAM
DISPLAY: 7in 1,024 x 600-pixel back-lit TFT LED
GRAPHICS: PowerVR SGX540
CONNECTIVITY: WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1
PORTS/SLOTS: Headphone jack, Micro HDMI output, micro USB
OPERATING SYSTEM: BlackBerry Tablet OS (QNX)
OTHER FEATURES: 5-megapixel camera, 3-megapixel front-facing camera
DIMENSIONS (W X D X H): 194 x 130 x 10mm
PRICE: US$499 (local price TBA)