MWC 2011: Hands-on with RIM’s PlayBook tablet

The seven-inch tablet is a form factor that seems a little unusual for a company that made its name specialising in exact, physical-buttoned business mobiles.

Despite the company's heritage, Research In Motion is going down the same route as the other tablet makers, with the PlayBook by trying to shake off this enterprise-only image and embrace the world of ‘fun things, like music and video’ made popular by annoying, acoustic-guitar twanging Apple adverts.

It’s the QNX OS and not the hardware that makes the strongest first impression, especially after testing out the deluge of nice – but samey – Android Honeycomb devices.

The way it handles multitasking, for instance, is via windows that flip up into the centre of the screen, activated by stroking the screen up from the bottom of the tablet.

It’s a little odd at first, especially for a long-time iPad user, but it's smooth and relatively painless to activate. While it's similar to how the WebOS handles multitasking, the ease and speed of accessing the apps is still impressive.

The hardware specs are also high quality, a dual-core 1Ghz processor marshalling activities within. The device feels relatively weighty at 425g for the small size (and therefore expensive).

An HDMI port for outputting HD video is a neat feature (it can also be found on the Motorola Xoom), but the high-spec 3MP front-facing camera (there's also a 5MP camera on the back) means that every gamer’s favourite activity – Video-Conferencing – is sharper than all the competition.

Of more interest to gamers is the inclusion of full Flash 10.1 playback, although I was unable to use that part of the tablet at the stand thanks to the inevitably wonky trade show connection.

In a similarly positive move for users interested purely in entertainment is the inclusion of two EA Mobile titles, Need for Speed Undercover and Tetris.

RIM hasn’t forgotten what made its BlackBerry phones such a successful brand. While there are now ‘entertainment’ applications and (finally) real games preinstalled on the device, the PlayBook also comes with a free copy of Office-To-Go installed for on-the-go mail merges and pie charts.

Despite all this positivity, there is still the real risk that the PlayBook will be overshadowed at launch by the new, larger Android tablets like the impressive Motorola Xoom, LG Optimus Pad, and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, which all have the advantage of being linked to the well-established Android Market.

There's also the potential problem that despite EA Mobile’s presence at launch, sources speaking to Pocket Gamer weren’t entirely optimistic that the company would continue its PlayBook support in a strong way.

But then very few competitors can offer quite all the features – Flash, dual-core processor, HDMI – in the same breath.

If (unconfirmed) rumours emerging from the conference are true, then we should see the PlayBook arrive in the US around April this year, retailing for around $500 for a standard wi-fi model.