Even though the Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu is claiming that Flash is a resource hog and will lead to poor PlayBook battery life, the latest video from RIM shows some awesome advantages of supporting Flash. The above video takes us through some HTML 5 video, as well as the desktop versions of YouTube, Facebook and Facebook games. All of this rich media browsing is all possible thanks to Flash support, and it’s hard to imagine a PlayBook without it. Hopefully, rumors of Flash sucking up battery life aren’t true, and we’ll have a tablet with decent battery life, and full, rich media browsing capabilities.
Last week we wrote about Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu who was making the claim that the PlayBook’s battery life was under-performing, and that RIM would delay the launch of the PlayBook in order to find an adequate solution. RIM responded to the claim saying that “Any testing or observation of battery life to date by anyone outside of RIM would have been performed using pre-beta units that were built without power management implemented.” Recently, Shaw Wu reiterated the claim saying he would be “very surprised if PlayBook matches anywhere near the battery life of the iPad at 10 hours unless it uses a larger battery.”
“Any testing or observation of battery life to date by anyone outside of RIM would have been performed using pre-beta units that were built without power management implemented. RIM is on track with its schedule to optimize the BlackBerry PlayBook’s battery life and looks forward to providing customers with a professional grade tablet that offers superior performance with comparable battery life.”
Shaw Wu, analyst with Kaufman Bros, recently said that the PlayBook launch is experiencing some delays due to the fact that currently, the device is experiencing relatively poor battery life. Apparently, the device’s charge will only last just a few hours, and while the device is still in development, RIM has had to postpone the launch to the May 2011 quarter.
“From our understanding, this [is] likely why RIMM pushed out its launch to the May 2011 quarter,” Wu writes. “Keep in mind that QNX (the OS on which PlayBook runs) wasn’t originally designed for mobile environments but rather for devices like network equipment and automobiles where battery life isn’t as much a constraint.” Continue reading ‘Rumor: PlayBook Launch Pushed Back to Improve Battery Life’
Analysts at Kaufman Bros are saying that RIM will be launching a touchscreen BlackBerry slider with a QWERTY keyboard, along with an updated web browser.
Kaufman said they are picking up strong indications of a new form factor under development that would be a cross between a touchscreen BlackBerry Storm 2 and a physical keyboard BlackBerry. They said, “from our understanding, this new BlackBerry would have a full touchscreen plus a pull-out physical keyboard. It would be similar to others from HTC, Palm, Motorola and others but of course sport a distinctive signature BlackBerry industrial design.”
We have heard rumors of such a device being codenamed Talladega, but nothing much else. It would still be cool to see a BlackBerry Storm slider though. Also, a touchscreen device would be a great launch device for the new WebKit-based BlackBerry Browser.
