RIM Reveals Details About Android App Player For The PlayBook

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RIM had officially announced that Android apps were going to be supported on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, though while we know that it will be coming, they have yet to offer much in terms of when. Still, we have seen some rumors and leaks surrounding the Android App Player in this lead up.

Anyway, the app player leaked back in July and caught the attention of the blogosphere, but sadly it was quickly pushed to the back burner. And speaking as to when it will arrive, the rumor mill suggests it will come with the PlayBook 2.0 update — but alas, we also have no solid release date for that.

But more to the point, RIM has recently offered up a bit more detail on the Android App Player. More specifically, they have offered up a bit more detail in terms of what it will not be able to do. And in short, it looks like the Android App Player may not be exactly what some had been hoping for. The details come by way of some RIM engineers who were recently speaking at the DroidCon event in Eastern Europe.

Android’s famed battery-sucking Live Wallpaper, SIP and SIP VoIP, anything built using the Native Development Kit, apps containing only App Widgets, and apps containing more than one activity tied to the Launcher.

In addition, any packages which rely on Google Maps, in-app billing services, Android’s text-to-speech engine, or the cloud-to-device messaging system will all be rendered unusable under the company’s runtime system.

Bottom line here, this is a case where the list of what it cannot do is going to be longer than what it can do. And that being said, while I will admit some disappointment, we also have to remember that the PlayBook is a BlackBerry device, not an Android device. In other words, those who were hoping to see the PlayBook get really cheap so they could buy one and run it as an Android device — you may want to reconsider.