MWC 2011: RIM Announces LTE and HSPA+ Versions of 4G PlayBook

The tablet market has shaped up pretty well, especially when you look at HTC, Samsung and Acer coming out with tablets at the MWC in Barcelona, Spain. RIM is hot on the heels with 4G LTE and HSPA + versions of the PlayBook.

Now with LTE and HSPA+

RIM had earlier unveiled the PlayBook at CES last month and are now adding the LTE and HSPA+ versions to their 4G models. To sum it up, they now have a total of four variants which are:

• BlackBerry PlayBook with Wi-Fi
• BlackBerry 4G PlayBook with Wi-Fi + WiMax
• BlackBerry 4G PlayBook with Wi-Fi + LTE
• BlackBerry 4G PlayBook with Wi-Fi + HSPA+

RIM PlayBook runs on BlackBerry’s QNX-based Operating System. The tablet is powered by a 1 GHz dual-core processor. There’s built-in support for HTML5 and is Adobe Flash 10.1 enabled. While the basic model supports 3G, the rest of the them support 4G. Here are the specs of the PlayBook:

• 7-inch LCD Capacitive Touchscreen with 1024 x 600 pixels resolution
• 3G/4G, Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR
• 5 Megapixel camera
• 3 Megapixel front-facing camera

PlayBook can play 1080p HD video and also supports H.264, WMV and MPEG4 HDMI video output for which it uses a micro HDMI port. In terms of software, PlayBook also supports POSIX OS, SMP, Open GL, Adobe Flash, Java and Adobe Mobile AIR.

While the Wi-Fi and WiMAX models are expected to hit the market in the second quarter of 2011, these two new versions will launch at the same time.