Now that Research in Motion has rolled out BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 to make the 7 inch tablet more useful, you might think the company would end the sale it’s been running that lets you pick up a PlayBook for as little as $199.
But you’d be wrong.
On February 21st, RIM released PlayBook OS 2.0. And up until recently, the PlayBook page at the BlackBerry Store has said its sale pricing for the tablet would end on February 20th.
But as of February 22nd, you can still get PlayBooks for as much as $300 off the list price. When the company launched the tablet last year, the cheapest model cost $499. Now you can pick one up for much less:
- 16GB PlayBook for $199
- 32GB PlayBook for $249
- 64GB PlayBook for $299
The PlayBook has a 7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel IPS display, a 1 GHz TI OMAP 4 dual core processor, and 1GB of RAM.
Initially the tablet was hampered by its lack of native email, contact, and calendar apps and the limited number of third party apps available from the BlackBerry App World. But PlayBook OS 2.0 addresses the first problem with new native apps and the latter by adding support for some Android applications.
The new software also includes the ability to pair your tablet with a BlackBerry Smartphone and use the phone to remote control the tablet.
If you’re not worried about voiding your warranty, you can also also root the tablet and install the Android Market in order to access even more third party apps.