RIM announces 4G PlayBook coming to Sprint summer 2011 - Page 2

What? No native email or calendar apps? In order to check your email and/or calendar, the PlayBook must be tethered to your blackberry phone - if you own one. OMG... Other than Blackberry owners, who would want that?

FAIL!

The great miscalculation of these also rans is using the phone companies as their point of consumer entry. If my POS LePad- what a stupid, meant for Asians only name-breaks, where do you take it? Sprint? Verizon? Dreadful thought.

No, give me Apple, and ONLY Apple.


SENT FROM MY IPAD

There is a very large installed based of BB so the Playbook will do well for folks that won't support iOS or Android via Good or ActiveSync.

We have to do a BB version of our app and it will be for the Playbook. Fortunately for me we have Air/Flash devs. Although, honestly we could just get by with just the webapp version.

Summer is for the 4G version (Sprint...really?). They still plan for 1Q 2011 for the wifi only version that can use a BB for tethering.

I finally dumped him on ignore. It's kinda like arguing with a broken clock, he's right every once in a while but it's a fairly rare occurence.

Wi-Fi version, not 3G version.

Sprint?! The Playbook saga just keeps getting worse!

The fact they're launching on sprint means they were snubbed by Verizon and AT&T. What a smack in the face for RIM and a testament to their diminishing influence.

Palm Pre anyone?

Don't understand your need to tell everybody you're putting me on ignore. I'm not jumping for your bait nor will I in future.

Has RIM declared what versions of Blackberry OS will work with the Playbook? I don't recall hearing anything, which either means it works with all versions or it only works with OS 6.

Your MBP would face the same battery life problem if you go to a website with heavy HTML5 animations and WebM videos without hardware accel. There is no way out.

So you add 1 hour in battery life in the ipad2. Then it basically becomes a question of 11 hours of ipad without flash vs. 8 hours of playbook with flash.

So you decided that Apple will add 1 hour of battery life for the iPad 2 and the PlayBook will have 8 hours?!

Please don't state your assumptions as facts.

I am saying that battery is the slowest technology mover in the whole computer industry --- it is not going to suddenly increase your battery life by 200% like CPU speed. RIM has stated that their goal is 8 hours.

It has always been incremental improvements in battery tech and CPU. Like someone else mentioned earlier, Apple do their own battery chemistry and the latest MacBook/Pro/Air battery life indicate that they can achieve noticeable improvements.

Even if RIM stated that their goal is eight hours they still didn't say they can achieve that goal. We are still more than two months away from an actual product launch. No information about battery life and pricing.

as a flash developer since '98, I have seen more atrocities created with the .swf extensions, from terrible animations to horribly compressed files. It's been a problem from clients trying to create the craziest of presentations with no concern on file size or which computer will actually have to run the files.

I have tried countless times to convince clients that director is a better option for what they want, but to no avail. Instead they want to put it up on the web too, something intended for cd/dvd/local playback. I have spent more time optimizing .flas for the better part of decade from projects that other contract workers walked away from projects, leaving them my hands. I have also taught, TA-ed, and tutored flash for over a decade. This was before the .flv, since then, I have pretty much abandoned flash.

The idea of running video with a very poor compression ratio with an even worse video/audio playback transcoded by adobe inside a propriety file app downloaded from the web? really..
It will never be processor efficient for mobile devices unless it gets completely rewritten. I am not going to even get into how actionscripting was never intended for non-multitouch input devices.

If you want develop for next generation of computer, namely mobile, look into iAd producer. If it will be half what I think it will be, it will completely replace adobe products with the exception After Effects and Photoshop. iAd producer will hopefully completely replace the completely functionality of flash while getting us developers back to writing javascript...

That is certainly Adobe's position, but I'm not convinced its entirely true. My CPU usage, temp and and fan speed are not impacted nearly as much when viewing HTML5 video as compared to viewing Flash video. Of course this is not a scientific assessment, but its still something and its still impacting my experience based on my normal usage.

Take out a hard drive with moving parts and put in a flash drive --- of course there is a lot of "once in a lifetime" battery life improvement.

It depends on what kind of HTML5 video --- h.264 which Apple has hardware accel or webm which doesn't (and I don't even think Safari supports webm).

The current MB and MBP have hard drives and they are rated at 10 hours of battery life and 1000 cycles.

You don't know how much increase in battery life the iPad 2 will get and how much battery life the PlayBook will have. Trying to support your opinion with another opinion as fact is not very clever thing to do.

It's so funny reading this thread where people are arguing about a product that isn't finished and hasn't even shipped. A vapor ware product is being compared to iPad version 1 when in all likelihood, iPad version 2 will have been out for months before RIM ever gets their device out the door.

RIM needs to stay quiet and just finish the thing. The more boasting they do while pushing back the release date makes them look like the Playbook development is out of control. They come off looking desperate. (maybe they are)

While I don't have any serious interest in buying a Playbook, I have nothing against it, nor do I have anything against RIM. Competition is good for the tablet space.

I love that two out of the four media quotes on RIM's website are from CrackBerry.com (alongside BoyGeniusReport and Oliver Bussman)... seriously? Can you imagine if when Apple released the iPad, their website showed half their endorsements from AppleInsider...???

I know that we are not going to see 20-30% battery life improvements in a given year --- on battery chemistry.

Yep and no doubt PlayBook 3 running on 5G will be announced shortly there after ...

Well I'd be OK with that if I could vet quotes

Unless RIM either starts making its own ICs or some hot new ultra low power parts come out of the gate before they start mass production (and assuming they have time for another round of integration testing), it seems fair to say the power requirements from a hardware standpoint are probably pretty fixed. It's going to come down to their software implementation of power managment, which is not trivial (as anyone that has worked on a pm-enabled kernel can verify). I'm pretty sure the folks working on the Linux OMAP3 pm kernel branch have been at it for quite awhile, and last I checked it is still caveated as not stable for production use.

The hardware is reasonably young for these tablets, and I think the fact that Apple caught everyone off guard with the iPad is forcing a lot of hands without allowing much time for optimization. There is a fine line between being too late to market to warrant consideration and rushing an "unfinished" product out the door.

I hope RIM does it right because I like the style so far, but I won't be too upset if they don't because it makes the decision to buy the iPad 2 that much easier.

Not true on the HTML5 at least for me. YouTube running strictly on HTML5 and with Click to Flash enabled (in case of ads) my MBP i7 runs a hell of a lot longer than YouTube with Flash allowed to run. The drop off in battery life is simply precipitous with Flash enabled and running.

Not really. Apples entire mobile history has been about more power and longer lifetime. The battery life of Apple products has gone forward only, so your losing the battle against feature creep seems to only apply to where the battle is fought poorly outside 1 Infinite Loop.


Not an unrealistic goal, but you have to actually execute to do that. The tradeoffs compared to Galaxy are a more power hungry CPU and a higher resolution screen, essentially the same form factor and internal volume. But no mention of any "new" battery technology to put more mwh into that same form factor. Without a better battery, the goal cannot be met if the other components are more power hungry. Geez, a first year engineering student can figure that out in ECE101.

I know this is a BS statement with no supporting fact. The are a combination of ways to achieve better battery life. Slightly bigger battery, improved battery chemistry, and more efficient HW is one way to do so.

And their goal was for it to be shipping already too...

Yeah, last word was release in the "May Quarter", now talk of Summer. There is a theoretical ~7 day overlap if they mix seasonal Summer with a financial May Quarter, but if they are referring to a financial Summer Quarter they just pushed back release again, potentially by another three months without having to state that up front.

Well, it could mean wifi in q1, 3g in q2 and 4g in q3.

Misinterpretation. nht put samab on ignore, not you.

Exactly, maybe, possibly. It's nice to never have a clear release schedule to be held to.

But unless RIM puts out explicit phased release information, you can only go with the latest word. If you have that info on a RIM press release let us see it. If not, your shiite outta luck on trying to play it for something else.

Nice try, but the first two generations of flash drives didn't exhibit the power savings the form factor promises over the long run due to inefficient controllers. So we are really yet to see the big SSD power savings unless you are comparing to a power hungry 7200rpm laptop drive. Being that those aren't the drives used to make power comparisons, the 4200rpm drives with aggressive spool-down behavior are, you are left without a point.

As for all the other components being once in a lifetime power savings, by definition every component upgrade is exactly that, yet we continue to get better power profiles because every couple years we get another once in a lifetime upgrade to the same component.

Yeah, you're catching on now. Once in a lifetime is a pure bullshit rhetorical attempt to twist language to your bidding. But reality doesn't conform to your flights of fantasy. I'm starting to doubt, with good evidence, that you paid attention in ECE101.

I don't think staying power will be a challenge for RIM. As long as this tablet matches what the Android can do, large corporations will buy it just because it's RIM. That said Apple has made pretty good strides in the enterprise with the iPad, so those who switched to it are likely to remain with apple. Those who haven't though would be more likely to go with RIM, now that it is available.

I want to stress that this is true ONLY if PlayBook can match android devices. If it can't, then gen 1 will flop and there will likely not be a gen 2, and possible not even RIM soon after.

Expressed an interest is not the same as actually putting down money. Show me the money. Especially for companies that did or were going to iPad but switched to the much better Playbook


Very possibly. But remember that the iPad is a consumer device that some businesses have found useful, not a device made for them like RIM is touting. They believe that focus is going to win folks over. Keep in mind that for many businesses they will be using these in house where there will be wifi and the road warriors can tether to the blackberries they already have.

This summer release will be a Book that has built in cell data, rather than needing to tether. And in a weird way, going with Sprint does make sense. Businesses don't want the problems of competing with thousands of iPhones etc for sketchy network connections. Sprint is unlikely to get the iPhone or any of the major phones, so they are less likely to suffer massive network bog down. And if you can still tether with your blackberry, you are covered if you travel to a spot without Sprint.

The only way anyone can say that is if they have confirmed data about the iPad 2. Which I doubt you have.


They have sent out review devices but apparently without all the features ready. Not a smart move as it gave folks a reason to bash, especially over battery. Yes they tried to explain but it just comes off like desperate spin. Again not good.


It is NOT bs. Apple rated it at 'up to' ten hours. If you get, more awesome. But it doesn't make that they guarantee less a lie. Just caution. If they had said 'up to 14 hours' and folks weren't ever getting that, the talk on the boards/reviews would not be pretty.


But what spec of CPU and GPU is required. I am thinking both are well above the specs of any tablet.


and what apps use such a method, how well are they being reviewed. After all if every app using that freedom is being shot down as battery sucking, crash prone tripe, then they are proving Apple's point.

Yep, and again this year we got a lot of talk about 'later this year'. These folks are trying to bet the current iPad specs and their guess for improvements. But they have shown their specs to Apple now, who can at least pick and chose their marketing to downplay any lacking.

Or laugh when it turns out that no one cares an the iPad 2 goes like mad

In fact I don't think we are going to see tons of huge changes in the iPad 2. Most of it will be feature improvement like more ram, more storage, perhaps a slightly faster processor. Maybe a new screen glass that isn't quite so glossy and easy to smudge.

The 'new' features, I think, will be a front facing camera for face time and replacing the unlocked GSM with a dual setup of unlocked GSM and CDMA (which will entice both main companies to lower their prices for data on such devices)

And I will wager that they actually keep the current 16gb wifi as is for schools, in house business and giving to the kiddies for playing games. With a $50-100 price drop


And zero accessibility. Having a blind boy in the family that is a major deal for me.

Adobe still hasn't done that rewrite for Mac OS and says it won't. That 'Tude is part of why Jobs resists them.

But in the end will it matter. More and more folks are stepping up with apps and non flash mobile pages. Even that 'evil' porn is going html5

Are the jumps from 3-4 hours battery life (industry standard two years ago) on average to 7-8 hours (last year's Apple average battery life) to over 10 hours not significant enough for you? Over 200% performance improvement? Those are more than incremental jumps on any scale. The only limit here is chemical interaction and surface area. The battery industry was content to keep selling the same-old battery technology to consumers with tiny little improvements to keep the market flush with repeat battery purchases. Even the physical structure was a hold-over from the ancient carbon cell unit.

I am amazed that other companies didn't get fed up and do what Apple did - invest in the research and development to drive a significant battery improvement that woke up the battery industry. Only now are they trotting out longer-life battery systems, which they have claimed to have had on the shelf for several years. Can't have Apple making them look like a buncha pikers now can they?

No, the problem for many of the tablet makers is that they haven't made the investment in doing their own battery technology and they rely on whatever the industry gives them. That means that they are at the mercy of the app system useage and cpu demand for logetivity on the battery front.

Even iphone's officially rated battery life only went from 7 hours 3G to 9 hours 3GS to 10 hours 4G.

Is by offering seamless integration with existing BES infrastructure, and a solid dev kit for the corporate coders. Otherwise they are going to have a higher cost-factor and they haven't even been released yet against the iPad which is already entrenching in most of the Fortune 50 companies and seeing significant interest from gov down to small business. Unless RIM can somehow forestall iPad/iPhone development already in place, they are going to only have a small selection of targets to sell to with any volume. The key question is "Why buy a Playbook?" What is it going to add to the productivity of the enterprise, and what are the cost savings going to be?

The iPad, since it has iOS-based direct Exchange connectivity - doesn't require a BES to translate and control, which means they can retire the BES hardware (and support contract) and RIM network support charges at a significant cost savings. RIM invested huge amount of development effort to shore up their DC's after several major outages and left handset and OS/app development languish while Android and iOS started nibbling their lunch. For now they will retain the BB loyalists, but they are not well-positioned to stem the erosion of their market.

But the amount of data useage supported under those rates jumped significantly - or are you choosing to selectively ignore that fact? And we are not talking about small-format handhelds here are we? We are talking about tablets which arguably have the space to have larger battery systems, and hence longer battery life. My example was from the laptop battery space and reflects the technology developed for portable devices by Apple. RIM is stuck with using whatever off-the-shelf battery system they can order to stuff into the tablet, hopefully with a supplier who is taking battery life seriously (Sanyo).

But we won't know until the bloody Playbook is a real product and not just some showpiece at CES. Admit that your battery example hit the bloody brickwall of successful Apple research and dev and move on.

very true. apple might be the only company who is still doing innovation while most of others just grab reference design and put the case onto it and sell them. by innovation, it is not just hardware, but also software, UI experiences, and exploring future.