RIM Rolls-Out PlayBook OS 2.0, Quietly Decides To Keep The Tablet Priced From $199

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We may have a little bit of good news for anyone that had been considering the purchase of a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet — those low prices seem to have stuck around. Yup, despite thinking that the sale prices would increase after PlayBook OS 2.0 software update was released, a quick check of the official BlackBerry Store shows prices starting at $199.

Of course, that $199 price tag is for the 16GB model. Otherwise, the 32GB and 64GB models are selling for not all that much more — $249 and $299 respectively. And at present, the estimated shipping times are showing as “within 7-14 business days.” In other words, it sounds like you may have to wait a bit before it will arrive on your doorstep.

That being said, a one or two week wait sounds much better than what you would have paid when these tablets were first introduced and selling for $499 and higher. And given we have spent so much time focusing on other tablets, a recap on the PlayBook specs seems to be in order. The PlayBook features a 7-inch (1024 x 600) WSVGA touchscreen, dual-core 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 3 megapixel front facing camera and a 5 megapixel rear facing camera with both capable of recording 1080p HD quality video.

Additionally, the PlayBook tablet measures in at 5.1 x 7.6 x 0.4 inches, weighs in at 0.9 pounds and has stereo speakers, a built-in stereo microphone, HDMI out and support for Adobe Flash Player 10.1 and HTML5. And lastly, speaking in terms of the PlayBook OS 2.0 update — it seems to have brought many of the missing features including native email and calendar.

Having spent some time personally with the OS 2.0 update installed I will say this — the update is very nice but also probably not enough to convince me to give up my iPad. Otherwise, the PlayBook hardware is wonderful. But in the end, even with the support of Android apps, the BlackBerry App World still seems lacking at this time.