It may seem a little strange that the maker of Blackberrys (Research in Motion or RIM) is releasing a tablet, but that’s the strange world that Apple has generated. And so today, RIM announced their Blackberry PlayBook, a 7” LCD, 1024 x 600 touch screen tablet with full multi-touch and gesture support.
You should be able to get your hands on one in early 2011 in the US. The PlayBook runs what’s now called Blackberry Tablet OS, but what was once called QNX – a real-time Unix embedded OS – before it was acquired by RIM.
Other notable features includes its 1GHz dual-core CPU, 1GB RAM, dual HD cameras (front and back – watch out iPad!), supports both HTML 5 and Adobe Flash, Bluetooth and WiFi a/b/g/n, and has microHDMI and microUSB ports. It weighs in under a pound ~0.9lb and is pretty thin at 0.4″.
No pricing yet, and no word on when there will be 3G and 4G models, not to mention that the SDK is not out yet and Apple has a tremendous lead in the app category, but the competition between Apple, RIM, et al. will still be interesting to watch.