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BlackBerry PlayBook

Earlier this week we put up a post letting you all know RIM was planning to release the latest developer beta for the BlackBerry PlayBook pushing the OS into v2.1.0.560 and now, the update has gone live for those waiting. RIM has included quite a few changes with this release, some of which I'm sure they left off the change log noted on the developer blog:

  • Improved HTML5 support
  • Portrait support for Email, Calendar and Contacts
  • Improved folder support including IMAP folder support
  • Full device encryption is now supported, so that the whole device and personal partition can be secure.
  • Screenshots are now saved in lossless PNG format.
  • Each Android app will now run in its own window. This greatly improves the user experience and consistency among the other application runtimes.
  • Access to the Camera hardware is now supported for Android apps, allowing many more application types to work on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet.
  • In-App Payment is now supported through the BlackBerry Payment SDK, so Android applications can include virtual items for sale in their applications.

Just as before, you will need to whitelist your BlackBerry PlayBook in order to download this release. Keep in mind, it is intended for BlackBerry developers and not really intended for end-users. If you can't handle dealing with some possible bugginess or are not a developer then you may wish to avoid even looking at loading this.

Note: After installing BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1 you will not be able to backup and restore data back to 2.0.x. Apps downloaded or purchased from App World while using BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1 may no longer work on other versions of the BlackBerry PlayBook OS. Not all apps which work on OS 2.0.x will work on BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1.

Register your BlackBerry PlayBook for the developer 2.1 Beta
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