My BlackBerry Playbook

So I got the tablet yesterday (it’s wasn’t a brick, Tibbs & BOOM LOL) and I started playing around with it. Honestly, with all the rave reviews on a number of websites I read,. I’m actually rather disappointed. The things that BlackBerry touted its Playbook doing, it doesn’t actually do or if it does, it’s with much toil.

What I don’t like about the Playbook (so far):

• It takes at least two minutes to run through the splash screens from a cold boot. Which I know doesn’t seem like a lot of time, but both my laptop and my phone only take about 10 seconds to start from a cold boot (and my phone goes through 2 splash screens). I initially thought maybe the tablet had frozen but nope, it was still just loading the splash screen as this has happened all 3 times I booted it.
  
• After going through all the settings, you are forced update to the newest version of the OS (not a big deal), except that it took over 2 HOURS to download and install the update (I had come across numerous people complaining about long update times took but I didn’t know they meant this long!)
  
• BB promised that the Playbook’s OS upgrade to 2.0 would play Android apps and it does (not all however) but with much effort. It’s not like you can just go in the app market or download them off the net. Nope! After a few hours of internet searching (because I found nothing on BB’s website) I did find something and it’s a little bit of a complicated process but by far the easiest way I found to get them on your Playbook is;

1. Download this certain program (I don’t want to name it, it being a 3rd party app) to your PC.
2. Find and download pre-converted Android to PB apps that you want, to your PC (there are many websites that have these pre-converted apps but be careful when downloading any 3rd party app).
3. Connect Playbook to PC.
4. Using program add app to Playbook.
​

Sounds easy enough right? but, for example, say you want a certain Android app on your PB that isn’t converted and you want to convert it yourself then the process gets a little more complicated with no promise of it actually working. Then it’s about a dozen or so steps that are quite involved, I haven’t tried it yet but I’m going to.

My problem with this is that though this process is time consuming, being tech inclined it was pretty “easy”. For less tech inclined people, it’s going to be difficult if not impossible. I don’t think it was a smart move by RIM to tout that your app can run Android apps but make it frustratingly hard to get said apps (especially considering their own apps are woefully subpar).

• It also touts having Adobe Flash Player 11.2 but it doesn’t (or doesn’t seem to work). I visited Facebook using both the PB app and the browser and it did not load any flash games. I tried updating it but I don’t think I can do that. This is part of the reason why I actually bought *this* tablet and it doesn’t work for that purpose. Huge bummer.
  
• The camera kind of sucks, but that’s not why I bought it so it doesn’t really bother me that much.
  
• There are certain app shortcuts on the home screen that I don’t need, don’t want or won’t use that I can’t delete.

Things I like.

• The screen is very clear and crisp.
• The touch screen is very (but not too) sensitive.
• The PB youtube app (I haven’t tried it from a browser) plays videos ok.

With all this said I’ve only been playing with it for a few hours and I haven’t really had time to play with all of its features. However, with it not or under performing the things that it stated it could do and that I actually bought it do is a let down.

I'm surprised at all the positive reviews I read, one person even called it "the most underrated tablet of the year". Am I missing something? does anyone here have any tips/tricks to share? Unless I find some redeeming quality somehow in this product, I’m so going to return it.

 

there's a reason people call them "crackberries" :-D

 

I thought that maybe they were addictive, like crack :-D


I see that is not the case.

 

Thank you for this Post dyamond
I was seriously thinking of getting one as well. With all the hype for this Playbook, I'm glad I waited ! I won't be buying it...
I always wait until the hype ads are over before I buy. And I do my research first as well.
As for Blackberry cellphones... I've read alot of reviews of the differences of Blackberry 9000 series and the only one that does not give one's grief [from online and word of mouth] is the Blackberry 9780. They seemed of got it right on this one. When Blackberry started with the touch series, it did not impress many Blackberry owners...
I own a Blackberry 9780 cellphone and I'm satisfied with it so far [almost 2 years now] At first it was new for me, but my carrier [Rogers] helped me a great deal with it and now I feel like a pro.... LOL

 

Yeah...there is a reason the Playbook was/is being s-canned.

 

I've been working on converting this just this ONE Android to BlackBerry file for almost 2 hours now. Every time I get past one error message and I think I might finally have it but nooooo then pops up another error message. It makes me want to do this.. http://www.mersenneforum.org/images/smilies/extra/bangheadonwall.gif

Working on error number 4 now and I'm totally ready to just give up. This is so not worth my effort.