Research in Motion (RIM) has announced the coming of BlackBerry Tablet OS 2.0, which is the anticipated OS based on QNX platform to power the BlackBerry Playbook, RIM’s dual-core 7-inch tablet. The new OS promises to deliver exceptional performance and high scalability.
The improved BlackBerry Tablet OS 2.0, based on QNX Nuetrino microkernel architecture, now features at least five notable improvements, according to Waheed Al Jarallah, senior trainer at Research in Motion, Philippines.
There’s now the presence of a unified inbox or a native email client that integrates email, contacts and details and updates from social apps such as Linked, Facebook, and Twitter and these can all be in one mailbox interface. The user can now also add other email addresses like Yahoo or Gmail and not just be confined to one.
The email interface has also been improved as the user can now change fonts and color when typing emails.
Another notable upgrade is the improved calendar function as the user can now create events, invite or notify friends on Facebook or Twitter to attend the function and remind oneself of the event through email notification.
The contacts page has now the ability to sync with contacts details of friends from social apps like Facebook, Twitter, and Linked. Contacts can also be scrolled or searched manually.
The BlackBerry Bridge function, a Bluetooth enabled function that syncs a BlackBerry phone with Playbook, has went beyond the sync function by making it possible for the BlackBerry smartphone to become a remote control for the Playbook. This is particularly helpful when the Playbook is hooked up to a larger screen for presentations. In addition to remote control function, the BlackBerry phone can also become a “clickable mouse” to go from one page to another of a presentation.
The browser has now included a “text only” option, providing the user to access only the text of a web address rather than the images or heavy graphics to ensure fast browsing and easy reading.
BlackBerry’s Playbook now also has access to thousands of apps from the Appworld, which at the moment is being populated by Android apps uploaded by developers in the Appworld. This is made possible by a repacking function in the Appworld, which allows Android apps to be converted for Playbook OS.
“Developers just submit their app and it will be repacked for the Appworld,” said Jarallah, who added that popular Android apps such as Angry Bird and print-to-go can now be accessed and uploaded in the Appworld. As of last count, there are now over 30,000 apps in the Appworld.
Jarallah said the new tablet OS will be introduced sometime in February and all Playbook will have the upgrade via over-the-air update (OTA).
Apart from a dual-core mobile CPU, the Blackberry Playbook supports both Adobe Flash and HTML5 and features full 1080p HD video recording. In addition, Blackberry Playbook features an HDMI video output and compression technology for smooth and faster operations of graphics heavy applications. It also boasts of either 32 GB or 16 GB internal storage and comes either in Wi-Fi only version or Wi-Fi and 3G version.
