BlackBerry Playbook gets root, a short grasp at life
Despite a promising start, the BlackBerry PlayBook has been slowly dying. First came the reviews, then the price cuts and Black Friday sales, and now the price has been slashed by more than half and RIM appears to be selling out stock. Still, those who decided to keep their PlayBooks have been hard at work, and today that work paid off.
Three developers have been working on an exploit found in the PlayBook's software earlier this year, and they have finally acquired root access on the device. The exploit, called Dingleberry, will be released to the public soon. Right now it doesn't do much other than allow you to watch Hulu (which was blocked soon after users began taking advantage of it) and access a hidden notification LED, but developers have hope for the potential of the hack.
Their most ambitious goal is to get a full version of Android running on the tablet, similar to what happened when the TouchPad went on fire sale. This is quite a lofty goal and would require a lot of work, but if they accomplish it could transform the PlayBook from a dead product to quite a desirable piece of hardware.
At the current price of $150, I know I would be buying a PlayBook if it ran Android well. How about you?
[intomobile]
