At CES, RIM hinted the BlackBerry PlayBook would ship soon after the show, telling me to “hold your breath” in regards to the release date.

It’s a good thing I didn’t listen, because I’d be long dead by now as the PlayBook tablet is slated to ship April 19, more than three months after CES.

While RIM never announced a delay or commented on pushing back the release date for its BlackBerry tablet, rumors and rumblings suggest RIM wanted the PlayBook on store shelves long before the second week of the fourth month of the year, especially considering the company announced it way back on September 27, 2010 when the iPad dominated the tablet landscape. Subsequent RIM marketing compared the PlayBook directly against the iPad, showing the PlayBook’s speed and Web browsing prowess.

Now that the iPad 2 has shipped with its faster dual-core processor, and Tegra 2-powered Motorola Xoom sits on store shelves, the PlayBook no longer looks so impressive.


Blame Flash
So what caused the delay? Early reports indicated RIM struggled with weak battery performance, and recently, touchscreen shortages courtesy of Apple iPad 2 demand have been blamed. But Wired now claims Flash is a contributing factor, claiming RIM probably had issues getting Flash to work properly on the tablet, citing Motorola’s Flash woes with the Xoom as evidence.

The Honeycomb tablet shipped without Flash support and Flash Player 10.2 for Android, which launched a few weeks after the Xoom but is still in prerelease, is reportedly unstable and limited (one issue is with its trouble handling 720p video).

PlayBook’s Flash and battery performance will reveal itself on April 19, but there is also evidence RIM is rushing the BlackBerry tablet out onto the market before it’s even ready. The tablet will not ship with native email, contact, or messaging apps. Those will come in the form of a “future software update” according to an RIM FAQ.



BlackBerry handset apps, including messaging and email, will appear on the tablet when the two devices are paired via BlackBerry Bridge. Otherwise, the PlayBook will only have access to mail over Wi-Fi at launch.

I checked out the PlayBook at CES and was extremely impressed by its performance in that controlled setting. But that was before I spent any time with Xoom and iPad 2. Now it seems the PlayBook is in danger of shipping as just another tablet, albeit one with unique features like the aforementioned BlackBerry handset tethering and a new QNX-based OS.


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