The LTE equipped BlackBerry PlayBook that RIM showed us back in February at Mobile World Congress has finally received a firm launch date and pricing — July 31st (in Canada) for $549 on Bell, with other Canadian carriers to likely pipe in with their own support announcements shortly thereafter.
Besides LTE, this new PlayBook is the same one we’ve been looking at for well over a year now. That is, the same 7″ 1024 x 600 display, 1.5 GHz dual-core processor and 1 GB of RAM are all here, as are the 1080p video support and 4,800 mAh battery.
For PlayBook aficionados yearning for some mobile roaming capabilities, the addition of LTE to your favorite tablet is no doubt a blessing, and probably reason enough to put your current love up on eBay to make way for the new LTE-loving PlayBook. For newcomers to the tablet scene, however, we have to wonder just how enticing a 1+ year old PlayBook is at $549 to someone whom has such options as the $499 iPad 3 with it’s bigger, much nicer display and better GPU as well as the incredibly affordable (and spec-wise, potent) Nexus 7 tablet by Google and ASUS complete with the latest Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS.
Which would you pick?
Via: MobileSyrup, BlackBerry Empire
