Gadgetory

what's up everyone John rent injure from TechnoBuffalo here back with another eighth round tablet Smackdown this time we've got Apple's iPad 2 is squaring up against rims newcomer the playbook let's go ahead and see who the winner is in the interest of not making this a 45 minute epic unfortunately categories have to be cut I picked the 8th that I felt were most relevant to average tablet users we're going to cover browser screen text input apps OS design camera and a potential so let's go ahead and jump right into what I use tablets for most the browser we've seen the browser on the iPad 2 quite a bit I've covered it ad nauseam on TechnoBuffalo pitch to zoom the multi-touch functionality works very well scrolling is really smooth it's got a nice physics engine so when you flick slowly it goes slowly you click fast it goes fast very rarely do you see the checkerboard loading pattern it just works very nicely it does not of course have flash support the sort of Apple's infamous I suppose now for that so if you're looking at regular web sites or html5 web sites you're gonna get a great browsing experience if flash is what you're looking for however is going to be unviewable on the iPad to us now let's move over to the playbook let's go ahead and open this up scrolling is also nice and smooth moves with your finger physics engines quite good pinch-to-zoom also works very well and this is all doing that while Flash content is running because the PlayBook does show Flash content actually shows it very nicely so I'll go ahead and hit the tab browser here you get that visualized look of the tabs so you can actually see what you're jumping to I'll go ahead and go to let's say my youtube channel youtube.com slash John for Lakers YouTube who's a course encoded in flash and you can see that it will start playing very quickly ready to go I know it's a showing the advertisement works very nicely actually it's a pretty smooth implantation of Flash it is a little bit choppy but it's definitely watchable if you go back again and start a hit back tab icon you can also access the Downloads folder which is quite nice you can see what you download it you can get access to all those files directly so because of a very smooth rising experience because that visualized have the interface which I personally like and because the ability to view your downloads you browse around is going to go to rinse play book alright so next let's talk about what you're going to be looking at when you're doing anything on these devices the screen the screen on the iPad 2 is 9 point 7 inches that's diagonal with a resolution of 1024 by 768 it's got a very nice viewing angle you can sort of view it from anywhere you are at due to that IPS technology as you can see there's a bit of reflection so when you're looking at the screen in direct sunlight you're gonna have a bit of trouble trying to view it however when you're not in direct sunlight colors are gonna look bold blacks are gonna look very dark taking a look now at the rim playbook it's got a 7 inch diagonal screen with a resolution of 1024 by 600 so again a very high resolution screen this also has a very nice viewing angle you can view it really any direction you're also gonna get that same glare unfortunately you're gonna get indirect sunlight you're going to get vibrant colors and you're also gonna get very dark blacks the difference between a nine point seven the seven inch is really going to be a matter of personal preference so that's not going to factor in here whether you want a larger tablet or a bit of a smaller one both look very nice pictures look really very pretty on each you can see an image I took with the rear facing camera here so this round is actually going to be a draw so let's go ahead and now talk about text input neither of these have physical keyboards you're gonna have to rely on your fingers and the screen for your text input so let me go ahead and jump into a notes application here on the iPad - we've seen this keyboard quite a bit it's relatively nice and easy-to-use portrait or landscape and this is one instance where the screen size really does come into play when you're typing you get a close to full-size keyboard here in landscape portrait you can do the thumb typing it's a little bit tough because the screen is wider but it is definitely usable when you push this over in landscape cover the keyboard is a pleasure to use alright so next let's talk about the keyboard on the playbook I'm using one of the bungled word applications and we'll talk about that when we get to apps let's go ahead and bring that up you can see it right here here is the obviously landscape keyboard orientation go ahead and switch on over to portrait it's more phone esque when you're typing so it's like a baby phone especially when it's in portrait in landscape it's just big enough that you can thumb type but it's not big enough that you could type normally I like you could with the iPad 2 the playbook does have a very nice cut copy and paste implementation I don't think it's as elegant as what Apple offers but it definitely works well you can select text and you can move back and forth so this is one instance I think where the screen size and screen real estate really does matter so text input is going to go to the iPad 2 right now you can't really do much for customization or keyboards that may come at a later time for the PlayBook wouldn't hold your breath um being able to customize a keyboard outside of other languages with the iPad 2 all right next let's talk about apps it's not really much to say that hasn't already been said about the App Store for the iPads robust there are hundreds of thousands probably close to millions of applications out there now from games to enhancements the app store in the app environment is very impressive but it's also been around for quite a while you're not gonna get that many bundled apps on the iPad 2 you're gonna get some camera applications like FaceTime which you can use if you like to video chat which is nice I can video chat from iPad 2 to iPhone 4 or Mack or any combination of those devices you're also going to have some other cool photo applications you're going to get photo booth and the camera in there you're going to access to iTunes in the iBook store on the application standpoint on the playbook this is where things get a bit interesting so you do have access to BlackBerry's app world which is not that populated with applications but that's started to be expected since a tablet is quite new I have applications that are in here that were meant for a smaller screen real estate you see on other BlackBerry devices it's got a very nice clean layout but there aren't that many apps here what will be coming is Android app support they haven't announced when sometime in the summer that will certainly do quite a number for apps for the PlayBook I won't talk about that in the potential that's going to be a really really nice benefit to the PlayBook but right now it's not here also one of the glaring omission that the PlayBook is a native mail and calendar application instead what you have to use if you want to look at your mail is go ahead and open up right here is just a shortcut to web-based emails let's to take your right to Yahoo's homepage hotmail homepage Gmail home page or AOL's home page unfortunately now you're gonna get some nice bundled app so we're gonna get work to go sheet to go and slideshow to go start gonna get mobile office bundles in here the bridge app is a nice additional - I'm to tether a blackberry to the playbook and use its data connection and use its native apps but not here yet the biggest omission and I can certainly forgive a new platform for not having a robust app store that's bound to happen as developers get access to the API is a little bit more and get their hands on the devices that will certainly grow what's really unforgivable though is the omission of a mail and native calendar application now ring the said that's certainly coming and assume it's going to be coming very soon but that doesn't help push the side rumors that the playbook was maybe rushed to market releasing a device without the basic functionality is a huge omission really use the playbook for any terms of business uses I know I like to take my calendar with me anywhere I go and being able to access that on my tablet is almost a necessity now that might be just unique to me but not having calendar and not having a mail application really is a big dent and the reason I would only tell what so if you couldn't guess this round is definitely going to go to the iPad - all right so next let's talk about the operating system the iPad 2 is powered of course by iOS and this is being powered II maybe see me fiddle around with this during the demo BlackBerry's new tablet OS which is powered by Q and X iOS again is something we've covered ad nauseam you've seen it it's an icon based interface there's not much customization you can do you can make folders by dragging an icon without jailbreak and you're limited to Apple sort of walled garden but it does work well it's very elegant and it's easy to use multitasking is accomplished by double tapping the home button and essentially it suspends applications and will resume them when you select it and yes that is a Starcraft 2 application I do watch Starcraft 2 casts I know it's tremendous nerd alert what's really interesting what I'm starting to find myself really enjoying is the BlackBerry tablet OS and that's a similar look and feel to what we've seen on the web OS you get all the open application shell read in the home screen when you want to close them you can flick them off the screen if you want to view your applications you can go ahead and open it up if you want to get back to the home screen you can drag right up here this bottom bezel is actually touch sensitive which is kind of neat you want to get to the menus you can pull down from the top and get access to all the menus right there and this is definitely true multitasking things work very very well so I've got a video right here if I want to open it up and let's say there's a playbook high def demo we'll go ahead and let that start playing BlackBerry PlayBook there it goes now if I slide that up you can see that that video is still playing there it's kinda neat to see as I go through and look at other applications that's still there if I want to close that I can swipe it up or there's that little as I mentioned kind of neat you get the controls to play and pause right there show up on the top I'm really excited when this finally does get native male support notification system should be quite nice some of what we've seen on BlackBerry OS 6 you're gonna get those right across the top it really is a very elegant operating system and I've been very impressed using it for the few days that I've had it I think it's got a lot of potential this round is gonna lie squarely in a personal preference and it's going to be a draw all right so next let's talk about design both have slate form factors the iPad 2 is pretty optimal to be used in landscape or portrait there's nothing really remarkable about the design it is very thin buttons are easily accessible the volume up and down your rotation or volume walk depending what you want to send set it as you've got the power and lock button on the top 3.5 milimeter headset jack also on the top in the bottom your connection port nothing overly exciting the PlayBook is most optimally viewed in landscape it's got a nice feel to it the bezel is just big enough that you can hold it and you're not gonna worry about tapping the screen the cameras I like because they're very far from the middle so your fingers aren't going to touch it it's got a nice soft touch plastic feel to it what really kills me however is the power and lock button is absolutely tiny not only is a tiny it's kind of recessed so whenever you want to use that and access it you really got to make sure you hit it quite right almost an inexcusable thing that rimmed it here go ahead and open it back up again I really need to make sure that I am getting my nail and there sometimes to hit it I've got relatively decent size hands so if you've got giant paws you're gonna have a hard time hitting that button something to keep in mind four factors not really coming into effect in this decision here but the button that I use all the time the lock and power button having that be noticeable on cumbrous definitely factors into this decision so the design is going to go to the iPad 2 all right next let's talk about Cameras Cameras one of those things that everybody was clamoring for for the iPad 2 now that we haven't can say it I don't really use the camera very much on the iPad 2 but that might be because it's extremely crappy the camera on the back of this guy if we flip it over its capable of shooting the 720p video the pictures that come out of it or grainy don't look very nice at all actually and often times I find my finger covering that camera depending on how I'm holding the device you have to be very cognizant covet just doesn't take the best pictures they've really said with the megapixel edge is on it presumably it's in the three issue Ange the cameras on the PlayBook are capable of shooting full 1080p video it's got a five megapixel shooter on the back which again is right in the middle so your fingers aren't gonna cover it you've got a nice three megapixel camera on the front there isn't any flash on either but you are getting a really nice camera that works very very well I can see the camera application open up there let me take a picture of the iPad the camera is just a world of difference as far as what works better here and I thought that this was important to include so camera is definitely going to go to the PlayBook all right let's go ahead and wrap this up with a talk about the potential of both platforms certainly iOS has a ton of potential and that potential is really squarely in the hands of developers Apple's hasn't changed operating system very much but what the developers can do with it is really a impressive feat applications from looking at my screen right now from speed test games to productivity video editing there's a lot that you can do I am very excited about the future of the BlackBerry tablet OS actually once we have Android app support once those glaring holes of calendar and nail are being filled and those are all something that would be addressed as the operating system in the tablet matures certainly before we see the PlayBook - there's a lot of potential in this operating system we're looking at is probably the future of blackberry as a it's elegant it works very well it's smooth it's optimized and I think that if it gets developer support it could definitely be a competitor in the tablet world so this is most definitely going to be a draw so we went through eight rounds or recap them for you browser surprisingly at least for me it went to the playbook screen was a draw text input went to the iPad two apps also went to the iPad 2 OS was a draw design went ipad 2 camera went back to the playbook and potential was a draw sentence us a final score of iPad 3 playbook 2 which means the iPad 2 is our winner with three rounds being me draw the iPad surprisingly barely eked out a victory if the PlayBook had launched with Android app support if we'd had that missing calendar and mail applications and if there'd been a little bit more app support this would have turned out very very differently I'm really looking forward to revisiting this in about six months when those things have been filled in to see how both of these tablets compare and are maturing so what'd you guys think is the playbook for you are you interested not interested really curious to know what you guys think i am john ruetten german TechnoBuffalo if you want to see a comparison of visualize comparison of really all the major tablets out on the market right now be sure to check out TechnoBuffalo link gonna be down below for an awesome infographic for all your tech news be sure to check us out I am John render and I'll see the next video bye bye