10-inch BlackBerry PlayBook makes an appearance in stray photo
Well, this is certainly interesting, to say the least. While I’m sure most of us felt that the BlackBerry PlayBook was on the way out, rumor has it that RIM is planning to release an updated 7-inch PlayBook tablet with 4G connectivity as early as tomorrow. However, it appears that might not be the only thing RIM has up its sleeves, as an image has surfaced from a Vietnamese forum that purportedly shows a 10-inch version of the BlackBerry tablet.
Of course, this is hardly more than wild speculation, but the device pictured certainly looks a lot like the PlayBook, only bigger, and there are quite a few pictures taken from different angles to rule out any image modification. The obvious change other than the actual size of the device is the display’s aspect ratio, which now appears to be the more square 4:3 of the iPad. A teardown shot posted with the rest of the images shows a massive 7,250mAh battery and SIM card slot, which along with the 4G branding on the side suggests that the 10-inch PlayBook will have carrier connectivity.
In fact, it almost seems possible that this may actually be the rumored PlayBook 4G or even a larger companion device, although there is no evidence to support that theory. If that is the case, however, then the 10-inch PlayBook could be expected to have a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and with 32GB of storage. There’s no information on whether the device pictured above was running the old PlayBook OS or BlackBerry 10, but one would hope that RIM would have the sense to put their latest OS on a new tablet.
Clearly, we have no idea when this 10-inch PlayBook will be released, or if it is even a reality. Still, I actually think that the tablet pictured above looks quite nice, and when paired with BlackBerry OS 10 could make a great device. The original PlayBook was great hardware hampered by software, so if the PlayBook 10-inch can get the software right with BlackBerry 10 then I think it has a chance to be a good device. There’s no way to find out if the 10-inch PlayBook is real other than to wait, but I know I will be keeping an eye out for any information about what could be the savior of RIM’s tablet plans.
[Engadget via Liliputing]
