Out of all the tablets we got our hands on the BlackBerry Playbook was hands down the tablet of the show. But the question on everyone’s mind is what is the battery life on this device going to be like. If they are going to compete with the iPad they have to legitimately come in at the 8 hours they are currently claiming. Thursday in Boston Sr Product Lead Ryan Bidan tried to ease doubts about longevity repeating to the audience that they would not have to worry about battery life. The goal is officially to get eight hours, or about a “full day” of use.
The battery is a departure from RIMs traditional replaceable battery commitment and the high capacity 5,300mAH is sealed in the back of the device. This battery is roughly a third larger than the Galaxy Tab even though RIM’s device is competitive in thickness and overall size.
The iPad has set the standard for battery life and RIM has to set up and get close to the iPad’s 10 hours but in a smaller shape. In addition to the making it happen in only 7 inches the Playbook is also stepping up performance by upgrading with a dual-core 1GHz OMAP 4430 chip and 1GB of RAM.
We’ve got our finger’s crossed that this next hurdle isn’t a big one, since they are going to need all hands on deck to stock the device with apps!
