[Sir Miyav]

This photo was taken at BlackBerry 10 Conference today.



Business Users:
- Portrait Email, Contacts & Calendar.
- App World carrier shelf.
- Bridge texting & wi-fi transport support.

Developers:
- Android multi-tasking.
- Camera API & In App Payments

IT Administrators:
- Over-the-air actuvation over Mobile Fusion.
- Personal Encryption.

I bet that we will see this update when new PlayBook 4G touch down.

[playbookster]

Most excellent

[yanicmb]

soooo excited!

[arielp]

hopefully will be updated within this may

is it too much to expect?

[S180]

^ 2.1 is not coming out until late July at the earliest.

[samab]

I wondered what wifi transport is --- bluetooth 3.0?

[grahamf]

^ 2.1 is not coming out until late July at the earliest.

I believe it will be earlier, as in July the PB will get BB10 (unless I got my schedules mussed up)

[Marauder2]

Bridge texting?! I'm in love

[greatwiseone]

Hopefully we'll see OS 2.1 sooner rather than later. Would also be cool to know what BB10 looks like on a tablet versus a phone....

[nappp]

Bridge texting?! I'm in love

been waiting for this since day 1!!!

[mphillips828]

maybe thats what the "wake up" campaign is counting down to! Would be an AMAZING surprise if announce 2.1 at the end of BBW!

[mphillips828]

Article written by BerryReview about the PlayBook 2.1


PlayBook OS 2.1 Launching By Early Summer? - BerryReview

[jeroen_13]

BB10 has the same layout as the Playbook™ .....

[rkennedy01]

I'm most intrigued by the "Android Multitasking" bullet point. If this works they way I imagine, it'll mean each Android app gets its own, isolated runtime, thus creating what would arguably be the most robust Android platform to date.

In one fell swoop they would eliminate 99% of the most complained-about flaws in the current implementation while also being able to lay claim to a "better Android than Android" experience - all thanks to the power of QNX.

Of course, multiple runtimes would also mean more memory consumed per Android app - it will be interesting to see if they can squeeze such a model into 1GB without negatively impacting native apps and the overall OS experience for legacy PB users.

Regardless, exciting stuff - can't wait to try it out...

RCK

[ChromiumNitrate]

"Personal Encryption" is what caught my eye. Hopefully this means users will finally be able to encrypt personal data. Would this type of encryption be exclusive to enterprise? I really hope not.

[morlock_man]

With the wake up campaign, I'd say they'll drop 2.1 on Friday Monday. They're really good at not demo'ing new OS features until they're pretty much ready to roll out.

I'd say 2.1 will provide full support for Cascades, so App developers that are creating for the alpha dev will be able to sell their apps on PlayBook immediately, rather than waiting for BB10 to launch alone. It also gives them access to half a million users to test the apps to work out bugs.

They've leveraged the playbook well.

[LuayS]

I also hope there are more secret tiny things that aren't mentioned.

[Piccolo860]

Any news on OTG?

[SifJar]

I'm most intrigued by the "Android Multitasking" bullet point. If this works they way I imagine, it'll mean each Android app gets its own, isolated runtime, thus creating what would arguably be the most robust Android platform to date.

In one fell swoop they would eliminate 99% of the most complained-about flaws in the current implementation while also being able to lay claim to a "better Android than Android" experience - all thanks to the power of QNX.

Of course, multiple runtimes would also mean more memory consumed per Android app - it will be interesting to see if they can squeeze such a model into 1GB without negatively impacting native apps and the overall OS experience for legacy PB users.

Regardless, exciting stuff - can't wait to try it out...

RCK

Without a more complete Android VM, PB will never have a "better Android experience than Android". Separate instances of the current VM for multiple apps would only fix one minor flaw I find with the current system. Main issue is incompatibility with a vast number of apps. Other minor flaws include not being able to actually change Android system wide settings (e.g. use a custom keyboard if one wishes; setting apps as default for certain file types/tasks etc.), the annoying navigation bar that displays every time you open the menu in an app (hopefully that will be gone with better Android multi-tasking managed from QNX side of things) and numerous other little quirks.

On top of all this, Android already supports multi-tasking just fine. As it was, PB offered a sub par experience with Android apps. This will undoubtedly make it better, but it will still not be as good as an experience as a native Android device (note that this refers only to Android apps - I don't mean that the PB is worse than Android devices generally, just for Android apps)

[berry_]

no bbm without bridge? sad

[samab]

Without a more complete Android VM, PB will never have a "better Android experience than Android". Separate instances of the current VM for multiple apps would only fix one minor flaw I find with the current system. Main issue is incompatibility with a vast number of apps. Other minor flaws include not being able to actually change Android system wide settings (e.g. use a custom keyboard if one wishes; setting apps as default for certain file types/tasks etc.), the annoying navigation bar that displays every time you open the menu in an app (hopefully that will be gone with better Android multi-tasking managed from QNX side of things) and numerous other little quirks.

On top of all this, Android already supports multi-tasking just fine. As it was, PB offered a sub par experience with Android apps. This will undoubtedly make it better, but it will still not be as good as an experience as a native Android device (note that this refers only to Android apps - I don't mean that the PB is worse than Android devices generally, just for Android apps)

But the incompatibility with many Android apps are due to the use of native codes in those Android apps --- where the native codes reside outside the Dalvik VM. So in the strict sense, there is really nothing wrong with the VM itself.

[SifJar]

But the incompatibility with many Android apps are due to the use of native codes in those Android apps --- where the native codes reside outside the Dalvik VM. So in the strict sense, there is really nothing wrong with the VM itself.

That is true in some cases. In others, there is no use of NDK and still the apps will not function. Those that do function often have issues and crashes, far more so than on an actual Android device.

On top of what I mentioned in my last post, RIM also need to add camera access to the VM for it to become even close to a "decent" Android experience.

[berry_]

RIM is doing a great job with supporting the Playbook more than a year after it launched (BB10 possibly by the end of this year), if, and I don't doubt that, they do the same with the BB10 phones, Androidusers will quickly come to the new platform in my opinion. It's really frustrating that Androidphones have dated software in less than a year.

[mzceetee]

With the wake up campaign, I'd say they'll drop 2.1 on Friday. They're really good at not demo'ing new OS features until they're pretty much ready to roll out.

I'd say 2.1 will provide full support for Cascades, so App developers that are creating for the alpha dev will be able to sell their apps on PlayBook immediately, rather than waiting for BB10 to launch alone. It also gives them access to half a million users to test the apps to work out bugs.

They've leveraged the playbook well.

Possiblity a price increase on the PB if 2.1 Cascade releasing...soon...maybe need to invest now for a 2nd one asap....

[samab]

That is true in some cases. In others, there is no use of NDK and still the apps will not function. Those that do function often have issues and crashes, far more so than on an actual Android device.

On top of what I mentioned in my last post, RIM also need to add camera access to the VM for it to become even close to a "decent" Android experience.

But you also have to specify whether those apps are sideloaded, whether they were repackaged by volunteers without the original source code, whether the crashes were due to volunteer repackaging that can't degrade the android apps gracefully (i.e. if there is "take a picture" button in the android app and the android player doesn't support camera api, then of course said android app would either hang or crash)...