RIM reassures on BlackBerry PlayBook battery

RIM during a business presentation in Boston on Thursday took steps to reassure those gathered about the battery life of the BlackBerry PlayBook. Once again hoping to ease doubts about longevity, senior product lead Ryan Bidan said the audience didn't have to worry about how long the battery would last. The goal was still officially to get eight hours, or about a "full day" of use.

The battery, only some of whose details were mentioned early on, is extremely capacious for the tablet's size at 5,300mAH. The capacity is roughly a third larger than that of the battery on the Galaxy Tab even though RIM's device is competitive in thickness and overall size. To reach the capacity, though, RIM has broken with a long tradition of insisting on removable batteries and has sealed in the pack to get as much internal space as possible.

RIM faces a major challenge since it has to get close to the iPad's well-known 10 hours of battery life in a smaller shape and while upgrading the performance with a dual-core 1GHz OMAP 4430 chip and 1GB of RAM.

Along with Bidan's remarks, RIM vice president Alec Taylor promised that RIM wouldn't have a quiet PlayBook launch and intended to publicize it as much as possible. Most expect it to ship in at least the US in March and to reach other key regions weeks later. He didn't detail plans but promised it wouldn't be a traditional, low-scale RIM launch.

"The magnitude will be commensurate with the opportunity," Taylor said. [via AllThingsD]

By Electronista Staff