Among the holiday sales for tablets this past Christmas was Blackberry Playbook from eBay. The regular Wi-Fi version has 1.0 GHz dual core processor, comes with two cameras, and supports Flash – something that Apple products do not.1 From the surface, this discount, which extended onto early this month, attracted a lot of people because of this tablet’s exceptional specifications.
But, in order to fully utilize Blackberry Playbook and not be disappointed like a lot of people have, here are some ways that I recommend to optimize the device like I did with mine.
1. Download “Basic” Apps from App World
My use of quotations around the word basic is intentional. Anyone who has seen the App World for Playbook can see how much it falls behind iTunes App Store or Google Play for Android Devices (easy example: Angry Bird became only available recently, and Temple Run is not available at all). Having said that, it is necessary to mention few free apps that you CAN download to maximize your use of playbook. You can spend money if you want, but my belief is that paid apps should come after exhausting all the free apps available.
Useful free apps are Evernote (for note-taking sync with smartphones and PCs), AIR Browser (for simple organization of files within playbook), BlueBox (for using your Dropbox account), Apollo (third-party app for Pandora, which is not directly available for playbook), and qPDF Viewer (there is a native Adobe Reader app, but it is not as smooth for features like zoom as this one). Excluding several games, these are about as good apps are concerned since Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Kindle, Twitter (there IS a good twitter app called Blaq, but you have to pay for it and the free one made by Twitter is not available), and other widely used apps are missing.
2. Learn “Sideloading”
A good news is that starting with Blackberry Playbook OS upgrades, RIM (the company that makes the device) has allowed users to upload .bar files from Android app files (apk extensions) and installing them through PC – or sideloading. Crankberry has a good tutorial here on how to do this, and googling for Blackberry Playbook bar files can guide you to web pages with some of great apps for playbook that you could not get from the App World. A good example is Kindle, which works as sideloaded app, and it runs very smoothly as well as allows you to make purchases from the device.
In addition, I was able to get StumbleUpon, Twitter, couple of good Android games, ooVoo (video chat app), Kayak (flight status checking), and of course, Kindle. A popular news app, Pulse, used to work for older version, but I noticed that it stopped working at some point. A huge downside even to this sideloading is that Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Skype are not available. I can understand the first two, but not having Skype support has been a major complaint for playbook users even since this device’s first release.
3. Use “Add to Home Screen” Feature from the Browser
Apps for gaming cannot be substituted for browser of any kind. But, apps that are based on the websites can be replaced with “Add to Home Screen” that form a shortcut button on the home screen. I know that all this does is to open the URL in the browser, but for iPhone users, you may remember that Google Maps did this same thing when Apple announced its own map last year. Icons on the home screen aren’t “apps,” but they are still better than favorites in the browser.
4. Use Smartphone and PC/Mac for Other Needs
I know that some complaints with this device have been with photo editing, map/navigation uses, and other issues with applications. I believe that the solution is to use smartphones and PC/Mac for these needs. Need to edit photos? Use Photoshop or GIMP. Lost somewhere? Your smartphone will be much better since it has 3G/4G networks. Since YouTube is supported, it is not like you cannot watch multimedia at all – and there are options like Amazon Prime that you can try.
The lack of apps to make this playbook better is an unfortunate fact, but sideloading and referring to other electronic devices may ease this difficulty for users not familiar with playbook.
Works Cited
1. Specs for 4G LTE Blackberry Playbook Tablet PC – US.
us.blackberry.com/playbook-tablet/tablet-specs.html
Other information came from personal experience with Blackberry Playbook
