Yesterday, there were reports that RIM’s upcoming tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook, was currently having some trouble with battery life. Usually, it’s expected that RIM not comment on rumours and speculation, but not this time. PR sent us a note saying:
“Any testing or observation of battery life to date by anyone outside of RIM would have been performed using pre-beta units that were built without power management implemented. RIM is on track with its schedule to optimize the BlackBerry PlayBook’s battery life and looks forward to providing customers with a professional grade tablet that offers superior performance with comparable battery life.”
For those unfamiliar, the BlackBerry PlayBook has a 5300 mAh battery, which will be taxed by a dual-core 1 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, a 7-inch 1024 x 600 capacitive touchscreen, a 5 and a 3 megapixel camera, and Wi-Fi (3G and 4G version coming soon, likely by way of new modules for the upgrade cavity). Arguably, the biggest thing about the PlayBook is the new OS, which currently stands apart from typical handheld software, and specializes in multimedia, stability, and multitasking. Best of all, it’ll be coming to RIM’s smartphones sooner or later. We’ve seen the QNX-based software run fairly smoothly in a number of demos, if you’re curious.
This statement from RIM could be taken as a knee-jerk reaction to the apocalyptic headlines this story had generated, or a legitimate defense to early judgments on an unfinished product – take it as you will. Personally, I think the only reasonable thing to do is to wait until we have the thing in our hands to make any statements about battery life or any other quality of the device. CES is just around the corner, and we’re expecting to get some hands-on time with it then; while that might not be long enough to confirm battery life, maybe RIM will give us a solid number in hours to work with.