Blackberry Playbook Review

After owning the Blackberry Playbook for more than a month know i thought it was time to write a review about it. I have had blackberry smartphones for a few years now and when I heard about RIM bringing out the Blackberry Playbook I was excited at ones. When the first technical specifications came out the first thing I wondered was if the tablet would not be too small. Well in my opinion it most definitely is not. It is easy in the hands, a little heavy, and it is easy to take it around with you. Another big plus for its size is off course the resolution on the screen. I have watch HD movies from it and it is absolutely amazing.

Starting my professional career as a search marketer of course I need to keep updated in both Search Marketing and Business. Playbook helps me do both. The apps developed for the playbook are great. Not a lot of nonsense, they are around, mostly apps you can really use. An app I use a lot is the SEM Scanner App. It helps me quickly to look at Meta data for websites. I can look at competitors or clients websites and quickly see what titles, keywords and descriptions they use. Another great app is the Deloitte Leadership Academy which gives you interviews with CEO’s, CFO’s and other leaders around the world and their view on Business, Management en Economics. I love watching these interviews which take about 5 to 30 minutes.

Another great functions off the Blackberry Playbook is being to multitask. When browsing the internet or using one of my apps I love that I can keep the music app, YouTube or video clips playing in the background.

One thing is really missing and that is a separate email client than the one provided by the Bridge app, which lets your Blackberry Smartphone connect to the Playbook. There have been rumors that RIM is working hard on providing this in one of the updates and I hope to welcome it soon. I am often in meetings where I leave my phone at the desk and take my playbook with me. But I get urgent emails sometimes which I need to be able to direct right away.

RIM announced in May that they would bring an App Player for Android apps. Something that caught my attention. I also believe this is a great strategy since RIM and its app developers are not known as great games and entertainment app developers. I rarely use my Playbook as a gaming device nor do I want to but still it would be fun to be able to have a few more popular games available on the playbook. Another positive aspect from this is that a lot of Dutch app developers only develop apps for Apple and Android. So many new apps en entertainment apps are not yet, and probably won’t be, available on the Blackberry Playbook.

Overall I am very happy with my Playbook, yes there are still a few bumps in the operating system which hopefully RIM will cure soon. I believe they will since they rapidly update their OS when little glitches are healed.

By Bart van Duinkerken