As widely expected, Research In Motion announced a tablet device today as the BlackBerry DEVCON 2010 conference kicked off. Rather than being called the BlackPad, RIM has named it the BlackBerry PlayBook.
“RIM set out to engineer the best professional-grade tablet in the industry with cutting-edge hardware features and one of the world’s most robust and flexible operating systems,” said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion. “The BlackBerry PlayBook solidly hits the mark with industry leading power, true multitasking, uncompromised web browsing and high performance multimedia.”
BlackBerry PlayBook specifications:
- Processor: 1 GHz dual-core processor
- Operating system: BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
- Connectivity: None
- Other connectivity: 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
- Display: 7-inch WSVGA capacitive touchscreen
- Memory: 1GB RAM
- Camera: Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing and 5 MP rear facing) with 1080p HD video recording
- Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB
- Dimensions / weight: 130 by 193 by 10 millimeters / 400 grams
The RIM PlayBook will suppport WebKit/HTML-5, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL, and Java. A native SDK will allow developers to build their own applications.
RIM has already promised that 3G and 4G connectivity will be offered in the future.
The BlackBerry PlayBook will be available in the United States in early 2011. RIM will add other international markets beginning in Q2 2011. Pricing information was not revealed.