Reluctantly, I took the plunge, went to the developer mode on my RIM Blackberry Playbook 16 GB, to get me a next 2.0 developer Beta of their OS. I've got my Playbook as a $199 deal from Radio Shack back in December, it's not there anymore, but if you're fast, a refurb unit could be yours at BestBuy for just $169.99. I'm not getting any referrals from BestBuy (of all places!), so don't blame me if that deal is gone, too. You were just not fast enough.
But you should have: Playbook is so smooth and slick that its crippled hardware counterpart named Kindle Fire will never be, ICS, or no ICS. The only (and BIG) problem with BB Playbook is that except for its native Browser, there's virtually no apps to speak of. Just nothing. Android Player demoed in October on RIM's DevCon for a developer beta of 2.0 failed to materialize in those 2.0 betas available for downloading.
It is still nowhere to be found, or not working properly, if you, like me, didn't go Dingleberry way.
Anyway, previous 2.0.0.6149 beta has brought no repair of video chat (front) camera, broke wallpapers from 1.0.0.8. If rooted, or should I say, "Dingleberried" it might give these goodies to all of you Android fans:
It's sandboxed Gingerbread what you see here, with many quirks. Will be Android Player for the February (some say February 17th) Release of 2.0 be based on ICS? I don't think so.
But enough about "sad" things. 7111 Beta update has wallpapers back, the whole operation feels smoother, and the Browser has hit a record 344 points at html5test.com (plus 9 bonus points, whatever they mean). For your comparing pleasure, the winner is Google Chrome 16.0 with 373 points (15 bonuses), runner-up is (now was) Firefox 330, upcoming Opera 12.0 will have the same 344, but we talk desktop browsers here. In tablets, the utterly unusable Firefox 9 was declared a champ with 313 points, but we know it's not anymore. (Apple's iOS 5 Safari is mere 305 points).
SunSpider JavaScript performance was not that great (2582 ms), but let's say, just fine.
BrowserMark by Rightware shows 57007 that beats LG Optimus 3D (47337), Samsung Galaxy S2 (35139) and all the rest of phones costing twice and more than BB Playbook.
Adobe Flash was probably upgraded to 11.1.something from 10.3, I'm too lazy to check the upgrade log. Everybody is happily kicking a dead lion in Adobe Flash, but it's good to know that the only mobile device they continue to work on is BB Playbook.
Talking about dead lions... Mike Lazaridis once was quoted as saying:
"I don't see the benefits of a tablet over a notebook...A lot of technology falls in the middle."Whatever. I've heard too many BS from visionaries of the past ("Americans don't read", "Android is a stolen product", und so weiter, ad infinitum et ad nauseam.) to ever pay attention. Hopefully, a new RIM's CEO won't kill QNX HP Apotheker-style, and hopefully TI OMAP will start building their OMAP5x platform at last -- for Playbook 2.
"Offshoot products trying to fill gaps that maybe don't need to be filled. Yes, a tablet is a cool concept, but can you put it in your pocket? And would you carry one around if you couldn't?"
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