It has been a week since I purchased my blackberry bold and my blackberry playbook and my reviews are mixed. While I have had no problems with the blackberry bold, it does have apps I would much rather have on my playbook. So when I heard that RIM was not doing so well in the stock department my mind started making a list of all the things they could make better with their playbook tablet.
My first complaint is that my playbook has frozen twice in the 7 days I have had it. It first froze during updates the day I bought it and again on the 7 day mark for seemingly no reason. I understand that this happens but should it happen so often?! There is also no reset option or way to remove the battery should this happen so you can either wait for it to unfreeze or wait for the battery to die. Seeing as I got the blackberry playbook for the travel convenience, this is very inconvenient.
Secondly, why does my smaller screened blackberry bold have great apps like kindle and wordpress but my larger screened playbook doesn’t? I’m pretty sure I won’t be typing up a blog on my cell phone. While typing on the playbook screens is something to get used to it is easier and faster than trying to type a bunch of paragraphs on a small cell phone. Reading a book would also take longer on a small curve then a perfectly sized playbook. I guess RIM needs to stimulate the playbook app availability and improve their OS.
Now that I have bashed a couple things how about I tell you what I like about the playbook. I love the size, it fits perfectly in my purse and makes for easy holding while traveling on public transit. The responsiveness of the screen to my touch is lovely, with barely any hesitation to the perfect touch yet not to a light accidental touch. What really sold me though, was the ability to tether blackberry products together to share the internet and phone plan.
I really had no clue what I could accomplish with the tethering but had a wee trip out tonight when my mother called the curve and a small window popped up on the playbook to tell me she was calling. That feature can be quite convenient for when your phone is on silent but you are working on your playbook, say, in class. Not to mention with tethering you pay one unlimited fee for your cell phone and voila you have unlimited internet on your playbook. Love it!!
I think further issues with the playbook really stem from web site owners, designers and builders who are not familiar with tablets and have yet to keep up with the demand. This doesn’t matter much to smaller businesses and individuals but to large popular websites such as facebook games, deviantart, amazon and wordpress. While many of them have moved to cell phones they have not yet jumped in to the growing tablet world.
I think that the playbook coupled with a blackberry cell phone can compete with other tablets if it addresses these issues and bring it shares back up but it needs work. Perhaps a wee drop on price would help too. All in all the playbook is not all that bad, it needs work just like most inventions do at the beginning but I’m very glad I got it. I’m sure it will be a great business investment in the long run!
