The Latest Play Book from BlackBerry

With all the fuss surrounding the launch of the iPad 2 and Android 3-based tablets of late, you’d be forgiven for thinking there were no other platforms in the tablet market.

This is far more than a two-horse race, however, and the latest to the starting gate is none other than RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook.

On the outside, it’s typical BlackBerry fare, expertly built with a flat back finished in matte,soft-touch plastic. With a 7in screen it’s smaller than most tablets we’ve seen recently, but this means it’s a lot more portable too – just 10.4mm thick and weighing 425g, it won’t quite fit in a jacket pocket but it’s not far off.

It might not look luxurious, but it’s much nicer to hold than the plasticky 7in Samsung Galaxy Tab(web ID: 362461). The quality is just what we’d expect from a manufacturer so well-versed in the art of producing corporate hardware.

Around the edges of the PlayBook you’ll find volume, playback and power controls and a 3.5mm headphone socket on the top edge, with a docking connector, micro USB and Micro HDMI sockets at the bottom. On the rear panel is a 5-megapixel camera, and there’s a 3-megapixel unit up front.

Under the hood there’s the now-customary dual-core 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. A six-axis gyroscope handles motion sensing duties, and you get GPS plus dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for connectivity. Initially, RIM will be launching the PlayBook as a Wi-Fi-only device, with a 3G version promised further down the track.