Blackberry Playbook

I’m sure most of you have heard about the new tablet. Yes! The brand new blackberry playbook. At RIM’s annual BlackBerry Developer Conference, CEO Mike Lazaridis announced the company's new tablet -- the PlayBook.  Lazaridis was joined on stage by the company's founder, Dan Dodge, who said that the PlayBook would be "an incredible gaming platform for publishers and the players." RIM also displayed the PlayBook's ability to handle Flash content via Flash 10.1, as well as Adobe AIR apps. The new slate -- which Lazaridis described as "the first professional tablet" -- will sport a 7-inch, 1024 x 600, capacitive multitouch display, a Cortex A9-based, dual-core 1GHz CPU (the company calls it the "fastest tablet ever"), 1GB of RAM, and a 3 megapixel front-facing camera along with a 5 megapixel rear lens (and yes, there will be video conferencing). There was no mention of onboard storage capacity during the keynote, though the devices we just spied is labeled 16GB and 32GB on their back panels. The PlayBook will be capable of 1080p HD video, and comes equipped with an HDMI port as well as a microUSB jack, 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi, and Bluetooth 2.1. The best part about this device is that its only 0.4-inches thick, and weighs just 400g (or about 0.9 pounds). While the PlayBook doesn't seem to rely on phone content alone, the press release from the company says that users can "use their tablet and smartphone interchangeably without worrying about syncing or duplicating data." RIM didn't hand out any solid launch dates beyond "early 2011," and of course, there was no mention of retail price.