We’ve got another BlackBerry PlayBook video to add to our growing collection. Last week, Rogers announced that they would be carrying the RIM’s first tablet, but they also took some time to give a quick walk-through at their tablet event. The demo was done by David Neale, RIM’s VP of Special Projects, who noted that as smoothly as it’s running now with full multitasking, the PlayBook still isn’t optimized for dual core.
At launch, the PlayBook will have a 1 GHz dual core processor, 1 GB of RAM, a 7-inch 1024 x 600 touchscreen, a 5 megapixel camera on the back, 3 megapixel camera on the front, HDMI-out, and a brand new operating system built on QNX, optimized for multitasking, multimedia, and stability.
The BBC video is the same one Mike Lazaridis used at Adobe MAX, but we do get a good look at some of the apps installed on pre-production units. The biggies are all there: Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo!, YouTube, Twitter, and Adobe Reader, all of which I suspect will launch on production models. The PlayBook is also using the Torch browser in this particular demo, though there’s a separate icon for the default PlayBook browser, which could suggest the final product will launch with something different. Even if RIM just ports the Torch browser to the PlayBook, I have a feeling the sheer processing power and memory will blow away any of the shortcomings on the handset version. In the bookmarks, we also see Hulu, which will be one of many bragging rights over the iPad that Flash support has to offer.
Take a looksee at the video for yourself – what do you think? Not too shabby, eh? Personally, I’m pretty much guaranteed to nab one when it launches in February for between $399 and $599. Rogers will probably be releasing an “official” (read: edited) video of the demo soon.
Update: Here’s the official video, little higher quality, plus a lengthy Q&A afterwards.
Rogers TabLife TO video: RIM’s David Neale on the new BlackBerry PlayBook and the tablet sector from Rogers Buzz on Vimeo.