The folks at Research in Motion have not taken kindly to initial reports that their tablet offering – dubbed the PlayBook – has been plagued by battery problems. Earlier this week, analyst Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros. noted to investors that RIM’s currently unreleased BlackBerry PlayBook had reportedly encountered battery life problems that saw the iPad competitor delivering only a few short hours of usage on a single charge.
Wu gleaned from his sources – industry and supply chain sources – that the PlayBook may require some “re-engineering.”
But it’s not true says RIM. In a strongly worded statement, Research in Motion noted the following:
Any testing or observation of battery life to date by anyone outside of RIM would have been performed using pre-beta units that were built without power management implemented. RIM is on track with its schedule to optimize the BlackBerry PlayBook’s battery life and looks forward to providing customers with a professional grade tablet that offers superior performance with comparable battery life.
Current plans call for the PlayBook to be released during the first quarter of 2011. The tablet will reportedly come with a price tag below the key $500 level.
RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie maintains that his PlayBook is “way ahead” of Apple’s iPad and “redefines what a tablet should do.”
