[bitek]

I like Android player. great that rim has introduced it on playbook. I find that 2.1 os really made it work much better. I find many apps to work flawlessly and fast. it is true that there are many poor Android apps ported to playbook. It does not look like native apps development got affected by android player. I find it unfortunate that some apps are not ported to playbook and are not available in app store although they work great on playbook like pinterest, ebay ,dictionary.com, lose it ! etc. I also find it unfortunate that some apps introduced to app world do not get regular updates such as Dolphin browser. Especially that some developers update their amdroid ports on playbook regurally such as Photo Studio Pro. Also it is great to see some developers taking effort and optimizing android ports for playbook such as Maxthon. Overall Rim experiment with the player is good but not perfect. I think playbook is better off with it than without it. your comments

Sent from Blackberry Playbook using TapaTalk 2

[westkirby01]

I agree with your comments. It is a shame that some of the developers have not taken on porting to the Playbook. Those that have done so have great looking products. Maybe BB10 (if we get it) will help even more.

Regards

[aha]

Great idea Imo.

[BlackBerry Guy]

Nice to have as an item on the spec sheet. It definitely helped fill the app gap a little too. Overall I'd say a good idea.

[DC506]

I think it was a great idea. not only did it help the Playbook and its users, it also helped developers see there is another business opportunity with Blackberry.

[Snipperdo17]

The performance has greatly improved to the point where load times are just like native apps most of the time so I am a fan of it. Wouldn't have access to a normal twitter app without it and a bunch of other apps that I use daily.

[howarmat]

i think it greatly hindered real native development. Sure its nice to add numbers but the native apps could be alot better than the ports if someone actually took the time to do them

[bitek]

i think it greatly hindered real native development. Sure its nice to add numbers but the native apps could be alot better than the ports if someone actually took the time to do them

I think some android ports work so well that there is no real reason to develop qnx version.what would be the point of doing tbat and spending men power if the result is the same. some great examples are tapatalk or pulse. on the other hand some apps need qnx version because android port is no good. example Dolphin browser or Maxthon. first one is just ok and Maxthon is good. however native version would be faster imo. so all depends on situation I guess.

Sent from Blackberry Playbook using TapaTalk 2

[GreyGhostRos]

Already discussed here?
In retrospect, was the Android App player was a good idea?

[howarmat]

I think some android ports work so well that there is no real reason to develop qnx version.what would be the point of doing tbat and spending men power if the result is the same. some great examples are tapatalk or pulse. on the other hand some apps need qnx version because android port is no good. example Dolphin browser or Maxthon. first one is just ok and Maxthon is good. however native version would be faster imo. so all depends on situation I guess.

Sent from Blackberry Playbook using TapaTalk 2

i agree some are OK but others just dont work correctly like google maps. Plus they wont follow the native cascades format. So menus wont be the same adding some confusion to the mix. Most of the android apps i use and want i had to sideload. The devs themselves havent come flocking to the idea really. Its been other people like handstar taking the initiutive to do it.

[Herve5]

I am a late buyer. I came to the Playbook without having ever bought a Blackberry phone, mostly out of refusing the tablet duopoly (and somewhat liking Canada )
I did this late, not because I ignored the PB OS, but because I had three 'no-go-otherwise' requirements: that there be an ad-filtering browser (I found SimpleBrowser), an offline openstreetmap-based GPS mapping (there is none other than MapDroyd), an offline wikipedia (there is none other than Wikipock).

In other words, without the andro player I'd not be there.
Now, I'll definitely buy any future native app that allos to replace MapDroid and Wikipock. Definitely, immediately. But in the meanwhile I'm here. And, btw, I do appreciate the last system upgrade, because it does improve the behavior of andro-ported apps.

Apart from this, and curiously, I feel somehon 'contaminated' by Android for one, single, feature: "back to previous status" of an app often means the bottom-left swipe for me, i. e., the Android interface. Maybe RIM is missing a simple "back" gesture somehow. Maybe I use too many android ports...

[cleveland216]

i think it greatly hindered real native development. Sure its nice to add numbers but the native apps could be alot better than the ports if someone actually took the time to do them

I tend to agree with this.
On one hand it's very nice using Google Nav over Bridge, albeit a bit choppy. But on the other hand it sux when the GPS can't be located and no matter what I try, and still end up having to reboot my Playbook for Google Nav to work again. This is very irritating when it happens and I use Google Nav all the time because I'm trying to get a feel for how unstable it is on the Playbook's Android Player.

But I always come back to the fact that the Android Player is waay better to have than not to have.

[bitek]

I tend to agree with this.
On one hand it's very nice using Google Nav over Bridge, albeit a bit choppy. But on the other hand it sux when the GPS can't be located and no matter what I try, and still end up having to reboot my Playbook for Google Nav to work again. This is very irritating when it happens and I use Google Nav all the time because I'm trying to get a feel for how unstable it is on the Playbook's Android Player.

But I always come back to the fact that the Android Player is waay better to have than not to have.

GPS works very well outside. it does not work inside at all for me. once i put playbook on dashboard it locates my position in no time.

[bitek]

i agree some are OK but others just dont work correctly like google maps. Plus they wont follow the native cascades format. So menus wont be the same adding some confusion to the mix. Most of the android apps i use and want i had to sideload. The devs themselves havent come flocking to the idea really. Its been other people like handstar taking the initiutive to do it.

i agree with this assessment. but the question still remains. is it good for playbook to have it or not in your opinion. i think it is good and makes the tablet unique. Sort of like Canada is unique because we have one french speaking province

[howarmat]

the playbook and RIM probably would not have survived if they didnt included the android player so its good that it has it. is that a better answer for you

[RubberChicken76]

and RIM probably would not have survived if they didnt included the android player so its good that it has it.

Cmon ... let's not exaggerate here. the PlayBook is immaterial to RIM's sales right now. And honestly, it has never been. they sell millions of phones and (on a good quarters) hundreds of thousands of PlayBooks. Of the nearly $3 billion in revenue that RIM reported last quarter, very little of it was PlayBook. In fact, I've seen it suggested that if the PlayBook hadn't existed at all, RIM might have remained in the black for the last three quarters.

The Android player helped the app count and brought some titles that might not have come otherwise. I know of a few people who bought it because it could run some Android apps (in addition to being cheap).

[F2]

I am a late buyer. I came to the Playbook without having ever bought a Blackberry phone, mostly out of refusing the tablet duopoly (and somewhat liking Canada )
I did this late, not because I ignored the PB OS, but because I had three 'no-go-otherwise' requirements: that there be an ad-filtering browser (I found SimpleBrowser), an offline openstreetmap-based GPS mapping (there is none other than MapDroyd), an offline wikipedia (there is none other than Wikipock).

In other words, without the andro player I'd not be there.
Now, I'll definitely buy any future native app that allos to replace MapDroid and Wikipock. Definitely, immediately. But in the meanwhile I'm here. And, btw, I do appreciate the last system upgrade, because it does improve the behavior of andro-ported apps.

Apart from this, and curiously, I feel somehon 'contaminated' by Android for one, single, feature: "back to previous status" of an app often means the bottom-left swipe for me, i. e., the Android interface. Maybe RIM is missing a simple "back" gesture somehow. Maybe I use too many android ports...

I agree. I can't tell you how many times I'm in SimpleBrowser or the BB browser and swipe across the bottom to GO-BACK!

[F2]

i agree with this assessment. but the question still remains. is it good for playbook to have it or not in your opinion. i think it is good and makes the tablet unique. Sort of like Canada is unique because we have one french speaking province

I thought it was the other way around - unique because there are still 9 English speaking provinces!

[Sriman]

In my opinion Android Player was one great move by RIM. They should update it to get Jelly Bean or at least Ice Cream Sandwich... PB all of sudden got a lot of apps including my apps (Meeting Minutes and Meeting Minutes Pro) because of the Android Player...

[sputneek]

I thought it was the other way around - unique because there are still 9 English speaking provinces!

Respectfully F2, that will never happen

[bitek]

I thought it was the other way around - unique because there are still 9 English speaking provinces!

I know what you mean. it is just cool to have Quebec as Canadian province. Old Montreal is spectacular and F1 weeken is just priceless. that is all

Sent from Blackberry Playbook using TapaTalk 2

[NFLPLAYBOOK]

I'm glad that it's being put to use and people are using it. I still don't think it was a good overall strategy. I would like to see RIM create a way to distinguish between the two types in App World. I don't mean seperating them but at least mark them as Android. Even researching the apps doesn't always tell you whether it's a port or a new native app and that matters to me.

[sputneek]

I know what you mean. it is just cool to have Quebec as Canadian province. Old Montreal is spectacular and F1 weeken is just priceless. that is all

Sent from Blackberry Playbook using TapaTalk 2

Montrealer born and raised downtown many moons ago, there's no other place on the planet quite like it and I've been around, btw, you never mentioned the food

[cleveland216]

the playbook and RIM probably would not have survived if they didnt included the android player so its good that it has it. is that a better answer for you

Yes.

Thank you.

[ODAAT]

They'd have been much better off either just sticking with QNX and investing more heavily in apps for that or just using Android as an OS and giving users full access to Google Play store. Even Kindles have second rate Android apps because they have fewer apps on the Amazon App store. When the Playbook was released there were no decent 7inch Android tablets and RIM would be well ahead of the game now as the hardware of the PB is or at least was brilliant. Unfortunately with the release of the Nexus 7, RIM have now missed the boat and I can't see how they will ever catch up in the tablet market competing against the massive functionality of the Nexus 7, the media capabilities of the Kindle and now the iPad mini. A second rate, heavily sandboxed version of Gingerbread with no access to Google Play or even Amazon App Store is of little use to anyone. The average consumer can't be expected to side load as a matter of course. They would have been better off having the balls to run with their own OS, having gone down that route in the first place.