Research In Motion today launched the new 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook tablet with built-in support for cellular networks, a feature that its initial models lacked.

The new 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook maintains a sleek form while delivering overall faster performance over the original BlackBerry PlayBook, as well as support for fast 4G LTE networks. The tablet is launching in Canada first.

"We're excited to bring customers the first BlackBerry PlayBook tablet with support for 4G LTE networks," said David J. Smith, Executive Vice President, Mobile Computing at Research In Motion. "The new 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook offers a broad range of premium features, including a stunning 7 inch display, front and rear facing HD video cameras, HDMI out and stereo speakers, and it also offers premium performance on high speed cellular networks, helping customers to be more productive than ever and to make the most of their time on the go."



Featuring the latest BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2 software, the 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook tablet gives users access to high speed mobile networks around the world (LTE and HSPA+)1 and offers a fast web experience that supports HTML5 functionality. The unified inbox allows users to easily manage multiple personal and work email accounts, as well as messages from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, all in one place. The built-in Calendar and Contacts apps offer features to help users better manage schedules. Plus, the apps' integration with social networks can provide users with a wealth of information about their contacts.

The 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is also enterprise ready. It can be easily managed with BlackBerry Mobile Fusion and includes BlackBerry Balance technology, which allows a user to use a BlackBerry PlayBook for both work and personal purposes by keeping business information highly secure and separate from personal information.

Out of the box, the 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook tablet comes preloaded with the tools. Thousands of apps for work and play are also available on the BlackBerry App World storefront, such as the recently launched BlackBerry Video Store for all PlayBook customers in Canada. The BlackBerry Video Store offers a catalog of thousands of movies and TV shows. Users can begin watching media as soon as they start to download a file, so they won't have to wait for the entire file to transfer before they can begin enjoying entertainment on the tablet's high resolution display or on an HDTV using the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet's HDMI output. Canadians can download the free Video Store app on BlackBerry App World.

The 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will come with 32GB of memory storage and will be available from Bell, Rogers and TELUS in Canada on August 9, 2012. Additional variants of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet supporting various high speed cellular networks are expected to be available in the coming months from carriers in the US, Europe, South Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Specifications

Display

7" LCD display
1024x600 screen resolution
Multi-touch, capacitive touch screen
WSVGA

Hardware & processing

1.5 GHz dual core processor
1 GB RAM
Symmetric multi-processing
6-axis motion sensing (gyroscope)

Connectivity

Wi-Fi: 802.11 a/b/g/n
USB: Micro USB port
HDMI: Micro HDMI port
Bluetooth: Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR
LTE (700, 1700 MHz), HSPA+ (2100, 1900, 1700, 800, 900 MHz)

Storage options

Built-in memory: 32 GB

Cameras

3 MP HD forward-facing camera
5 MP HD rear-facing camera
1080p resolution recording

Navigation

Digital compass (magnetometer) GPS

Web browsing

Adobe Flash 11.2 enabled
Built-in support for HTML5

Multimedia

Stereo speakers
Stereo microphones
Video output: H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VP, WMV 9
Learn more about supported
media types