Playbook Specs, Details, Launch Date and Price

Check this out for a quadruple whamy of juicy Blackberry Playbook news! Detailed specs  of the upcoming 7 inch tablet, some nice feature details plus some news on price and possible launch.

Let’s start with the specification which is to say the least pretty impressive. The Playbook, as most of you are probably well aware is a 7 inch tablet, so similar in size to the original Samsung Galaxy tablet. The RIM device’s LCD screen will be a multi-touch capacitive unit with a visually awesome 1024 x 600 resolution.
The rest of the external measurements 130 x 194 x 10mm making the Playbook a couple of mm thicker than the iPad 2 but all together much smaller and more portable. Weight is also very impressive weighing in at a feathery 495g.

Under the hood is where it counts right? and thankfully RIM have pull our all the stops when speccing the Playbook. A 1Ghz OMAP 4430 dual-core CPU from Texas Instruments and 1Gb RAM take care of the brain power and graphical grunt.
Storage wise there will be a 16-32 and 64Gb version available, all of which will feature Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1, but no 3G as yet.
Connectivity shouldn’t be an issue for the Blackberry tablet either as it’s getting a full range or plugs and ports including micro USB and a micro HDMI.

As with most tablet today the Playbook will get two cameras one for video chat on the front with a rear facing camera for taking photos, but unlike most companies (i.e Apple) Blackberry have been pretty generous with their cameras speccing a 3 mega-pixel front unit and a 5 mega-pixel rear.

All that wonderful hardware will be nothing without an OS to run on it, and Blackberry have done the Playbook proud by writing a completely new tablet specific version of its QNX based operating system that supports full multi-tasking and corporate ready encryption straight from the box.

Another nice feature RIM have squeezed in to the tiny device is a touch sensitive bezel, a first for any tablet device and a pretty snazzy feature.
A quick press of the bottom left corner will bring up the on screen keyboard, while a sideways swipe action will toggle between open applications. Swiping up will minimize your current window and swiping down will open in app options.

It’s all looking pretty impressive, but if it’s going to get crazy pricing no one is going to buy one, well it looks like the Playbook even trumps the competition in that department too! with reported pricing for the top of the range 64Gb model supposedly costing less than $500!

So when will we be able to head to the local BestBuy and pick one up? RIM hasn’t released official launch dates but a leaked report claims that the Playbook will launch around March 27th.

With both the Playbook and WIFI Xoom launching around the same time and Apple’s iPad 2 having a severe shortage problem it’s still anyone’s guess at which tablet will take 2011’s tablet of the year prize!

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