Playbook OS2.0 out

[notfred]

Updated mine this morning before heading in to work, haven't had a chance to play with it yet.

[Dposcorp]

Can I check my email now?

[derFunkenstein]

according to Ars' little writeup, yes, you can check your email.

[ChronoReverse]

Could you try out some Android apps too when you get a chance? They're supposed to be supported now right?

I'm curious as to how performance and usability is like. It would also be nice to know how well games work but that's far less important.

[Philldoe]

Yes, android apps work fine. I side-loaded Pandora and the Dolphin browser. Multi tasking works inside the player window, native apps multi task in the normal UI. If you have a BB the new bridge app allows you to use the phone as a mouse and keyboard for the Playbook, android tablets, PS3 and even your PC.

[ChronoReverse]

So you can just sideload any APK directly? You don't have to do anything unusual other than that?

[Philldoe]

Nope, has to be re-packaged as a .bar file, but it's super easy to do. There is also a list of zip files you can DL and change to .bar for sideloading.

http://www.playbookbars.com/

[ChronoReverse]

What I meant is can you do all that yourself? Not all Android apps will work of course but can I just do the repackaging using a local tool?

[codedivine]

Browser seems to be improved quite a bit.
1. Performance is much better both subjectively and objectively. I got a sunspider 0.9.1 score of about 2150 which is quite competitive.
2. A "reading mode" has been added for long articles that allows you to read the article in portrait mode without the website stylesheets etc applied. Good for reading, say, reviews from TR or realworldtech articles
3. WebGL is now supported in the browser. Performance is quite decent.

Emails work fine, I have been running Gmail on it and have been getting email pushed within a minute or so.

OTOH, still no Kindle or Skype etc.

[codedivine]

What I meant is can you do all that yourself? Not all Android apps will work of course but can I just do the repackaging using a local tool?

I have not tried it myself, but a tool called DDPB supposedly does exactly that: Local packaging of apk into bar.

[notfred]

I like the email notifications, but I can see that chewing in to the battery life pretty quickly.

[Philldoe]

What I meant is can you do all that yourself? Not all Android apps will work of course but can I just do the repackaging using a local tool?

Yes you can do it yourself. Tutorials are on the crackberry forums.

[Philldoe]

If any of you guys need an app converted just let me know. I have the tools and keys to do it. Just don't ask for paid apps that you don't own.

[codedivine]

For those wanting to sideload Android APKs repackaged as BAR files, now there is a tutorial from Crackberry.
http://crackberry.com/how-get-kindle-go ... -blackberr