Tag: Review

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RIM BlackBerry Playbook Video Review (25 minutes)

UPDATE:
Official BlackBerry Playbook PH pricing:
16GB at P23,990
32GB at P28,990
64GB at P33,990

The Playbook will be available August 6 2011 via retail and telcos.

I host a weekly tech show called ‘The Geeks’ every Wednesday from 2-4PM, live over the Internet. We archive copies for future viewing. If you’re interested, catch us at this url: http://www.flippish.com/vjlive at that time.

In this segment I show my co-host Sheena Dian the BlackBerry Playbook. We spend a half hour talking about this outlier tablet. If you want to see more photos and commentary, I featured the Playbook back in its infancy at Mobile World Congress ’11 with Andi Manzano.

Pros
Best form factor among the 7 inch tablets
Comes with neoprene case
Amazing multitask functions
Imaginative touch sensitive frame

Cons
Very limited number of apps
Noticeable UI lag (which we have to bring up given the new standards of dual core Android tablets)
We have to wait for Android Marketplace support
Very hard to do PIM and email if you don’t own a BlackBerry
No 3G version (rely on a BlackBerry phone to tether unless you connect via mobile WiFi hotspot)
Although not available here yet, the rumored price is at PHP 30,xxx.xx

Verdict
The BlackBerry Playbook has always seemed like a work in progress to me. If you track the progress of this tablet for the past 12 months you will see how RIM has brought it to life by supporting Android apps. That’s the whole irony — the Playbook (will) support Android apps but PIM only works well if you own a BlackBerry smartphone.

I honestly cannot give a real verdict. We will have to wait for the time when the Playbook truly supports Android apps. If you already own a BlackBerry smartphone, the Playbook makes sense … but so does an iPad or Android tablet. There’s the rub.

One comment to note from my high school barkada who now lives in Canada:

Since RIM is a Canadian company, the Playbook has been all over the place here in Vancouver. And yet, it is not doing so well. At all.

I’ve gotten some serious hands on time with the thing and spoken with a few Blackberry reps, Blackberry App developers, as well as some local tech bloggers, and it looks like Blackberry keeps making promises it can’t keep. They told us that the Android support and the native email client would come in June. Well, June came and went and it’s not here.

App development for the thing is apparently pretty difficult, definitely not as easy as developing for the iPad and Android OS, so Apps have been very slow to the marketplace.

For the apps that are there, most of them work fine, but there are random performance issues that keep cropping up with the Playbook… apps will hang for no reason, crash for no reason, and even sometimes refuse to load. Even Blackberry’s own browser is one of the most unreliable when it comes to performance.

It’s sad because the hardware sure looks pretty and it does promise great things. But for now, promise is all it has, it seems. There are rumblings around the country that RIM is dying fast, and the Playbook is one of the big reasons for that.

Categories
Mostly Everything

HTC ChaCha: The Facebook phone you’ve been waiting for! (Part II)

This is the second part of a two part series. Part I can be found here.

Continue reading “HTC ChaCha: The Facebook phone you’ve been waiting for! (Part II)”
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Mostly Everything

Samsung Galaxy S II: Best smartphone for 2011?

N.B. You can pre-order the Samsung Galaxy S II by following these instructions. Retail price is PHP 29,990. Discounted price is PHP 26,990.

For the past three weeks I’ve been playing with both the prototype and the actual unit of Samsung’s lastest Android gem, the Galaxy S II. I first got to hold the device back in Mobile World Congress ’11 in Barcelona and it is, without doubt, the most highly anticipated smartphone in the Android universe because it’s simply mind blowing.

This phone deserves to be reviewed from two perspectives: (1) as the successor to the first Samsung Galaxy S which was also highly popular and (2) from the perspective of an Android device and how it compares to the competition.

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Mostly Everything

Hands on with the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Arc

Yes it may be made out of cheap plastic but that doesn’t mean this phone isn’t a looker. The XPERIA Arc from Sony Ericsson is one of the rare Android 2.3 Gingerbread-ready phones in the local market today (the other one being the HTC Desire S). This is an “Acceptance Unit” which simply means that it is, like us, waiting for someone to accept us for who we really are.

OK seriously, more photos after the jump.

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Mostly Everything

Hands on with the Dell Streak 5 inch hybrid

Guess what? I’m doing my very first hands on without actual photos. That’s because I came by the unit through means which I cannot disclose in public. No worries. I didn’t crash an event. I was quite surprised though to have met someone who actually had a unit on him. Old news na pala ito. So without “in the wild” pics, I’m going to give you my first impression of this new device. Trust me I’m a blogger.

The Dell Streak, although labeled as a Tablet by Dell, sits in between the 3 and 4 inch screen Android phones common to HTC, Samsung and Sony Ericsson and the 7 inch Android tablets and iPads. The Dell Streak is at the golden mean of 5 inches.

I was floored with the form factor. A 5 inch device CAN be a sweet spot between a regular phone and a tablet as I was able to hold the Streak up to my ear without looking silly and still have a tablet-like feel for browsing sites and playing games. It holds well on both hands — and even with one hand and provides, IMHO the best touch screen SMS-keyboard experience I have yet seen without sacrificing portability. Sure you can do the same thing on a Galaxy Tab or an iPad but you won’t have the gift of being able to slide the phone into your pocket. Because the Streak has a pretty huge screen, Dell bundles the device with its own neoprene carrying pouch.

The Dell Streak runs on Android 2.2 with support for a front face camera. In terms of performance, I found the UI to be a step less than fast but I’m, not sure if this has anything to do with the fact that the screen is huge. It is, at the end of the day, workable. I didn’t have time to run apps. Neither did I have time to road test the battery.

Pros: Great screen, best form factor, fits in your pocket, “5 inch sweet spot”
Cons: Battery cover is hard to snap on and off

I’m not sure if the Dell Streak will be launched officially but if it does, the sweet spot form factor and screen size is sure to win the hearts of many LOLZ. I definitely would not mind owning one.