Yesterday my PlayBook get stuck. I was able to pop up some dialogs (for a while), but no touch response, hence no way to actually reboot it. I did some search on various forums, but found only way to hard reset it (a.k.a factory reset).

After a while of playing with buttons I found a way. Simply press and hold power button for 5+ seconds. This will turn off you PlayBook (I wasn’t able to see this because of the screen being frozen). Wait a while so the device can do all the shutdown stuff (the screen blanks). Now press the power button again and PlayBook will begin booting.

If you know other ways, be comments for you.

Few days ago I wrote “BlackBerry PlayBook – review after some time” and I mentioned two major pains I have. And guess what. There new firmware available during these days, version 1.0.5, and it solves pretty much the “power button issue” I was talking about.

Turning it on isn’t issue, as there’s a gesture. But the turning it off (to stand by) was problem (maybe just for my fingers 8-)). But the new firmware improves the panel you’ll when you tap on battery icon.

Not only you can put PlayBook into stand by mode, hence no need to use button and problem solved, you can also adjust brightness. Good, sometimes, especially during the evening or night, I’d like to lower the brightness a little. Now it’s easy.

There’s also handy features of showing you, in left top corner, that you have some update available for application from AppWorld.

Now you don’t have to open AppWorld application couple times a week just to see no updates for applications are there. You’ll simply see it here.

I wish to have arrow keys I was talking about as well. But my hopes are still high, maybe next time. Every little improvement counts.

My initial review of BlackBerry PlayBook was based on couple of hours using it. Right now I’ve used it almost every day since, so I have some observations based on real world usage.

Disadvantages

Because I actually do type on BlackBerry PlayBook, mainly because it’s surprisingly easy, I miss one item on keyboard. It’s arrow keys. I do typos, I need to change something in URL, …, and hitting the right place with finger is pain. I often end up close and rather trying again I delete the small portion of text and type what I want and retype the deleted part. Pretty annoying. But my hopes are high, because it is pure software stuff, maybe the next major update will address it.

The other issue, and I was already talking about it in previous post, is the power button. I still can’t properly press it. Luckily you can turn on PlayBook swiping from one edge to the opposite one. To turn it off I simply let it dim. Easy workaround, but it somehow stuck in my head.

That’s pretty much what bothers me most. Following problems are just some observations, but from my view minor.

Because I do browse a lot and I heavily use more than one tab I would like to have some easier way to switch between tabs, rather than to swipe from top to bring “menu” (I have collapsed address bar, it’s better for reading) and there select another tab. Right now I do the move quickly, on the other hand.

Advantages

Let me start it this way. I love my PlayBook. The size is still what I wanted. Fits my usage pattern exactly. Same for weight.

I especially like the system. Full multitasking is what my, developer’s, mind is used to. I do a lot of stuff directly on PlayBook. The system is stable and boy it’s fast. I know the hardware isn’t bad either. You have to do really a lot stuff to stress it. And you’ll notice it even before because the backside will be hot.

Which brings me to the battery life. During the work day I use it occasionally and the battery lasts from morning to evening easily. Under heavy load you will search for charger in approximately four hours. Six to seven hours of normal (yeah I know this is weak statement) usage is my observation. Good or bad? You be the judge.

I know I already mentioned it before, however I find it extremely handy – you can access the memory as network share. Hence to put some files in it, like videos, podcasts, documents, etc. (you’re not limited to particular file types), you A) can use file manager you’re familiar with and B) don’t need to install some obscure program (yes, I mean iTunes on Windows) just to put files in. The share can also be password protected.

Summary

The overall felling is very positive. And I still use Windows Mobile based phone, thus no BlackBerry Bridge. With BlackBerry phone? Who knows…

If you have any questions about BlackBerry PlayBook, feel free to use comments.

P.S.: This post, except adding links, was completely written on PlayBook.

Similarly to my post about Kindle’s browser I looked how the browser in PlayBook is identifying self.

With the latest OS 1.0.3.1868 the User-Agent string is:

Mozilla/5.0 (PlayBook; U; RIM Tablet OS 1.0.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/0.0.1 Safari/534.11+

It contains “PlayBook”, so it’s easily grep-able.