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New Disappointing Details About Playbook ‘Android Player’ — As if the Delays Weren’t Disappointing Enough Already


Remember the Blackberry PlayBook? Yeah well, prior to it’s release way back in April, RIM spilled the beans on what seemed like a really neat feature… the ability to run Android applications on the device thanks to an application called the Android Player. We covered a demo of this functionality that RIM showed during Blackberry World back in May, and we were genuinely impressed with how it seemed to work.

Some 5 months after the launch of the Blackberry PlayBook, not only has the Android Player not even been released, but new details tell us that it’s going to be much less impressive than we were initially led to believe.

Dante Cesa of Engadget points out a story from Thinq with new details about the Android Player. Specifically, the Blackberry PlayBook won’t be able to run any applications that have been developed with the Native Development Kit. There are no official figures on how many applications use the NDK, but it’s likely that a decent amount going by Google’s description of the tool: “The Android NDK is a companion tool to the Android SDK that lets you build performance-critical portions of your apps in native code. It provides headers and libraries that allow you to build activities, handle user input, use hardware sensors, access application resources, and more, when programming in C or C++”

Not only are NDK-built applications off-limits for the Blackberry Playbook’s Android Player, but so are any applications which rely on Google Maps, text-to-speech, in-app purchases, or the cloud-to-device messaging system that you’ve seen used with Google’s Chrome to Phone extension.

Blackberry’s PlayBook launched to much fanfare, but was cut down pretty quickly by reviewers for having missing features… you know, like an email client. After failing to gain much traction, thoughts of RIM exiting the tablet market are starting to crop up, definitely not a good sign for a company that is already widely regarded as behind the times in its once thriving smartphone lineup.

RIM Shows off PlayBook’s ‘Android Player’ Functionality — Integration Looks Impressive, Seamless [video]


playbookAt the BlackBerry World 2011 conference, RIM demonstrated its upcoming Android Player application which will allow PlayBook [product page] users to run Android applications. This could be the gambit that RIM needs to get up to speed in the app sector while seamlessly enhancing the user-experience.

What impresses me is that the device doesn’t have access to the source-code of the Android applications that are running. It’s actually able to run the application straight from the binary package that would be distributed to any Android device. Have a look at this in action:

The integration here looks rather seamless. I was assuming that things would get confusing for consumers because of the difference in controls between native PlayBook apps and Android apps, but according to these fellows, the gestures (menu and home button) are mapped identically between the two types of applications. This means that users will be able to use without having to think about whether they are native PlayBook apps or those that were originally intended for Android. This also means that Android developers can create a single application then distribute it to the PlayBook and Android devices; a win-win-win for consumers-developers-RIM.

Android applications on the PlayBook won’t be restricted to those who know how to sideload applications. RIM says that Android apps will be distributed right from their very own BlackBerry App World application store, providing ease of use for the consumer from instillation to operation.

Sadly, RIM’s PlayBook launched before this functionality (and arguably even core features) was ready for prime-time. The Android Player is slated for release some time this summer. The sooner the better, I say.

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