14 DAY TRIAL // Today, Research In Motion’s 4G LTE-enabled flavor of the BlackBerry PlayBook made an official appearance on shelves in Canada.
The tablet PC was made official last week, when the leading handset vendor announced plans to have it out on the market in its homeland country first, and to push it progressively to more areas in the coming months.
Starting today, Canadian mobile phone users who would like to benefit from fast 4G LTE connectivity on RIM’s device can head over to one of the country’s largest wireless carriers to purchase the new PLayBook version.
Those who will choose to acquire the new device on a three-year contract agreement will have to pay only $349.99 (around €284) for it at Rogers, for example. However, they would have to get $549.99 out of their pockets, should they choose to grab it contract free.
Bell and TELUS are offering the tablet PC at similar price tags, which are a bit higher when compared to those available for the Wi-Fi only tablet (which goes for $179 for the 16GB flavor).
In addition to the 4G LTE connectivity options included in the new slate, RIM did little to no modifications to the actual device.
It kept the same 7-inch form factor as the original, with a 1024 X 600 pixel resolution, a 5.0-megapixel photo snapper on the back with video recording capabilities, a 3.0MP front-facing camera for video-calling, and 32GB of internal memory.
The new device runs under BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 (though an upgrade to 2.1 might not be too far), features WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n and GPS capabilities, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, and a battery capable of delivering up to 9 hours music or video playback.
“Everything you need from a tablet. Everything you expect from a BlackBerry device. Connect with the world around you and get things done faster virtually anywhere, anytime with the new 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook tablet featuring connectivity to the Rogers LTE network and PlayBook OS 2.0,” Rogers notes on its website.
“Bringing together the best of BlackBerry communications, powerful productivity tools including Documents To Go and Print To Go built-in, 32GB capacity and a 1.5 GHz dual core processor, the BlackBerry PlayBook helps you multitask efficiently so you can balance work and your personal life, to get the best of both worlds.”