Three days after competitor Futurebazaar.com opened booking for the blackberry playbook, India’s premier digital e-tailer Letsbuy.com too has started offering Blackberry Playbook on its site.
The entry model, with 16 GB of onboard memory, has been priced at around Rs 28,000 while the 32 GB model will cost Rs 32,990 and 64 GB will set you back by Rs 37,990.
While Futurebazaar is offering free data-cable and a pouch, Letsbuy.com is offering free Amzer silicon case and screen protectors worth Rs 1,555 along with the 16 GB and 32 GB variants.
The Playbook, a seven-inch ‘professional’ counterpart to the iPad, was announced a year ago by Research in Motion, the Blackberry maker but was panned by critics upon its actual release. The tablet, RIM’s answer to the iPhone, has to depend on an existing Blackberry phone for cellular connectivity, unlike other tablets.
The cellular connectivity has been kept away from the device to appeal to bulk customers, such as big enterprises, who are worried about data leakage. When connected through the WiFi, companies can monitor the data traffic flowing through the device.
As a result, the tablet is likely to appeal only to the security conscious corporate types, rather than ordinary consumers.
It is around 0.4-inches thick, very slighly thicker than the iPad 2. At around 420 gm, it is comparable in weight to the Flyer and much lighter than the 700 gm plus iPad.
Futurebazaar did has not given details of the pricing yet.
The starting price for the product is around Rs 24,000 in the US.
It has a 1 GHz dual core ARM processor and also records full HD video on its 5 megapixel camera. Though it doesn’t have any cellular connectivity, it supports WiFi and also has a second camera, possibly to make video calls.
The display is classic TFT (not OLED), but capacitive and has the normal ‘netbook’ resolution of around 0.6 megapixels (1024*600).
The processor is from TI and runs the QNX OS here. It has 1GB of RAM, the highest amount found in tablets. QNX has got good reviews for being stable and more capable than the old Blackberry OS.
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