2011 is certainly the year of the tablet announcement if not of the actual devices themselves. Early news from CES is pointing to a whole whack of Android tablets that won’t be available before the end of the year, at which time they’ll almost certainly be up against the iPad 2 and the BlackBerry PlayBook.
I’ll be surprised if Apple doesn’t include a few surprises in their next gen iPad, but it’s fairly safe to say that it’s going to have some predictable improvements: lighter, faster, better screen, front-facing camera for FaceTime. They’re enjoying a near complete lock on the tablet market right now — easily facing down their only real challenger in the form of the Samsung GALAXY Tab (warning: autoplaying Flastastrophe ahead) — but what of their long term foe RIM?
Well, don’t write the boys from Waterloo off just yet. Most of the Android tablets we’re seeing are me-too plays but the PlayBook has some definite tricks up its sleeve. Matt Hartley, tech reporter for The Financial Post, had a chance to play with one firsthand:
I’m intrigued by the touchscreen that extends beyond the borders of the visible area, much like the innovative but ultimately unsuccessful Palm Pre (the whole swipe up into app switcher with ‘card’ like apps is very WebOS-like). I’m also curious as to how it jibes with Apple’s patent on touch-sensitive bezels. Gestures are a big deal and that opens up an interesting interaction paradigm outside of the now-standard pinch-and-zoom variety. It might introduce a fairly steep learning curve in terms of which screen edge does what, but nothing that regular users won’t quickly adapt to.
There’s a lot to like in even this limited view that tops the current generation of iPad: 1080p video from both cameras certainly beats no cameras and an HDMI port for viewing the device UI and video output easily trumps VGA for apps that have been specifically written to use it. Screen resolution is 1024 x 760 on a 7″ screen (182 ppi), which gives a greater pixel density than the iPad’s 1024 x 768 on a 9.7″ screen (132 ppi). I’d expect the iPad 2 to catch up to much of this, and even exceed it if the Retina Display makes the leap from phone to pad with its awesome 326 ppi.
[Tech note: Pixels Per Inch (PPI) measures the number of dots that can display a color for every square inch of the display. More dots blend more seamlessly together, giving a crisper image that’s easier on the eyes. Apple claims the Retina Display’s pixel density exceeds the human eye’s ability to distinguish the dots, which may or may not be entirely accurate but is pretty cool regardless].
One thing we do know: the PlayBook that comes out this quarter will not have onboard 3G but will tether to BlackBerries for accessing your data connection. I kinda of wish that Apple had gone the same route with the iPad and iPhone, since my iPhone’s data plan is much bigger than my ability to consume it. I like the freedom of 3G on the iPad, but the truth is that I’m never far from my iPhone when I’m using it. RIM and Sprint announced a 4G PlayBook later in the day, which is expected by summer and will be the first PlayBook with a wide area network connection on board. Would that make you wait to buy one?
