Submitted by “Today a free software update has been made available for Wi-Fi BlackBerry PlayBook tablets. This release brings with it many new features for business customers and IT administrators that make the tablet a seriously enterprise-ready device and a productivity powerhouse. Combined with BlackBerry Mobile Fusion and the coming BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, managing BlackBerry PlayBook tablets just got a whole lot more functional.”
I just upgraded my Playbook and I’m posting this with it. It seems to work fine, and an excellent tablet just got a little bit better.
The main thing I still lack is Japanese input (I know there are third party apps that do it, but I’d like the OS to have it built in)
After you’ve upgraded your tablet to 2.1, do visit App World as there are two additional free games sponsored by BB.
So, should I buy one? They are pretty cheap…
I got my 64GB here in the UK for 129 pounds (about $200) and I like the hardware a lot. The OS is fine (UI reminds me of webOS in the way it handles apps as cards, with associated swipes to close), but the major weakness is the App World Store, which is both sparse and expensive (5 pounds [$8] for Angry Birds in the UK store!).
Yes, you can side-load Android apps to somewhat counteract this but a) it’s nowhere as easy to do as native Android devices (i.e. it’s not just “put apk on sdcard, enable unknown sources, run file manager and select apk to install”) and b) many Android apps do not work correctly in the run-time on the Playbook, which doesn’t help matters.
Overall, if you just need the basic apps, it does those well (the browser’s rendering for example, is excellent), but anything beyond that, I’m not sure I could recommend it.
Has anyone had any luck running Android apps out of the box on the playbook? I ask because improvements to the Android runtime is mentioned as one of the higlights of the new update.
If so, please point to a simple process for getting that going.
The major thing I find missing from the playbook is aplication availability. There are some great apps that I have on my android phone that I would love to have on the playbook tablet.