That’s all folks. BlackBerry has confirmed that it won’t be releasing a BlackBerry 10 software update for its 7 inch tablet.
Despite the fact that the BlackBerry PlayBook already runs software that looks a lot like BB10, CEO Thorstein Heins says the company has’t been satisfied with the way the new operating system performs on the tablet.
It’s possible that we could eventually see new tablets from BlackBerry that will run the latest software. But at this point, the PlayBook is stuck in the past.
When the BlackBerry PlayBook launched in 2011, the company tried to charge an iPad-like $499 for the device. These days you can often pick one up for as little as $100.
That’s not to say the tablet is useless. There are tens of thousands of apps available for the PlayBook, including many Android apps that have been repackaged and submitted to the BlackBerry World store.
And the built-in apps aren’t half bad. The PlayBook comes with a pretty decent mobile web browser and video player, and the multitasking system is pretty slick, letting you view live previews of any app while it’s running — you can even watch a video in a tiny thumbnail from the multitasking screen.
But if the falling prices of PlayBooks and the company’s decision not to release a new model are anything to go by, the company’s first tablet wasn’t exactly a success story for BlackBerry. So it’s not shocking to see that the company hasn’t bothered to optimize the new BB10 software to run on it.
That means that apps which developers write for new phones like the BlackBerry Z10 or Q10 won’t necessarily work on the PlayBook.
It’s still sad news for existing PlayBook owners who had been hoping for an update. Maybe BlackBerry should soften its stance on jailbreaking and make it easier for users to install unmodified Android apps again. It’s been a while since we could do that with a PlayBook tablet, but somehow I doubt we’ll see official support for that kind of activity anytime soon.
via TechCrunch
hmm, almost bought one a few months back when 16gb units were $100 or less solely to play with BB10 (which was “coming soon”)
So glad I passed. I would be angry if I bought it based on the promise of bb10.
I would have said this was a good thing before the release of the
Z10/Q10, because it would have put a fantastic floor on basic
performance and features from which the BBOS10 platform could grow. You
know, like OpenGL ES 3.0 support for instance, or, 2GB of memory.
From this point of view putting BBOS10 on the playbook would have
retarded the advancement of the platform as a whole, as the playbook
only has an OpenGL ES 2.0 compliant GPU, and, 1GB of memory.
But then Blackberry did a monumentally stupid thing and released its
new ‘flagship’ BBOS10 devices sportiing a SoC that uses the Adreno 225
GPU…which only supports the older graphics standard.
And so, the opportunity for a clean slate was wasted.
Sad!
Makes me so glad I did not buy one. The best blackberry decisions I’ve made since owning a Curve was to buy some other brand. Way to go Blackberry.
How to win marketshare and influence people….(not).. by Pissing off your current consumers. Basically they lied.
As a Playbook owner I am not surprised. Nice hardware and a slick OS but it always had some shortcomings and the lack of apps was crushing. After using an Android tablet and being able to install any app I could think of it was always a little difficult to pick up the Playbook and use it again. It is a shame the hardware is locked down or someone over at XDA developers might find another use for the playbooks.
This will be another paper weight for my desk, this is not how you keep Blackberry owners loyal. I was hoping that they would bring the playbook back, but after the comments made about moving away from Tablets, I am not supprised. and than there were two
Actually there are three. Android, Apple and Microsoft. If RT is retired I guess you could say two if you count tablets running Windows 8/8.1 only as PCs.