Even BlackBerry fans agree that Playbook has missing features. Since hardware-wise the tablet wasn’t bad enough to warrant the ‘faceplant grade’ reception, one can only guess what the main reason was for such a tragic launch. The starting price of $499 must have pushed a number of would-be-customers off the fence, the rest ran away when they saw the non-iOS, non-Android, non-Windows operating system.
Despite the disappointing appearance the tablet has made, there are approximately 5 to 700,000 Blackberry Playbooks out there, a customer-base RIM prefers not to scare away if given the choice. Hence this coming major software update.
The new release brings anticipated features such as native e-mail, contacts and calendar apps. BBM — easily the most used app on any RIM device — have not made it into 2.0. It remains accessible through the reworked Blackberry Bridge 2.0.
Arguably the most interesting (while not necessarily the most useful) feature Bridge 2.0 brings is the remote control. With it you can turn your touch-screen capable BlackBerry smartphone into a trackpad and a thumb-operated keyboard for the tablet.
The new operating system is scheduled to arrive as a download on the 21st of February.
Below you can watch IntoMobile’s video on the new features in Playbook OS 2 as presented by a RIM employee.
With the new polished software, one almost regrets not picking up a Playbook when it was on sale for $199…
via n4bb.com
