BlackBerry PlayBook native email, contacts and calendar shown off at BlackBerry Innovation Forum

Glad they worked on it :)

oh wow... i'm 1st! LOL

BBM?

I've heard the BBM was going to be included, and I've heard that it was currently not possible to do BBM on the PlayBook. Any word on which is correct?

What is that briefcase looking icon in the toolbar?

looks nice, i cant wait till this comes out.

Heaven have answered!

This is getting better and better!!! And i Just ordered my palybook on sale yesterday at Best Buy online!!!!

Very nice.

It looks like they might actually stand a chance at meeting a deadline. Then again, I think it is BIS and BES that are the holdup since they were originally designed to deal with just one PIN.

Doesn't look any different from when they FIRST showed it off.

Ok now lets release the beta version at least!

"It'll be out last summer....we swear"

Its a stupid tablet. Just buy a nook tablet or a kindle fire. They both are supported complete and basically the same. The playbook needs to go away and RIM needs to act like it never happened.

Any word on whether it is going to be a simple/boring UI or whether TAT will have anything to do with prettying it up?

Makes my new Playbook purchase even better. Looking forward to this coming in a couple of months.

Looks good. Can't wait for this! Will enjoy my new PB for a few months and will feel new again come February!

Looks like my 64GB PB for $229 that will be in before christmas is right on time for this :D can't wait and I'm so glad I didn't get 1 at launch!

Ah! Look at that - Thats my follow notification from twitter.... :) @CuteGecko nice work!

nice looking forward to valentines day!! im ditching the wife for my new os this year!

Things keep looking better and better, I find myself carrying around my PB more often despite already owning an iPad and a experimental tablet of which I'm still working on a OS for.

One thing I really hope RIM works on is the keyboard. Adding auto-punctuation and a bit of spell checking on the fly would be wonderful implemented system wide. If my old defunct unused Curve 8310 can do it, why not this tiny beast of a tablet.

Well I'd love to be optimistic, but we did see a demo of Native apps at BBW back in May and they were scrapped and redone. Hopefully we see them on February 17th, but I'm going to assume we won't.

Looking forward to the outrage when people find out the native email, contacts and calendar are going to be using ActiveSync and not Blackberry Push technology……….

Looks nice. Guess I'll see what they come up with in February.
In the meantime, I already have email, calendar, contacts, BBM, Notes, and files. Today (for months actually). Bridge works wonderfully.

I just wish RIM would more the secure and unique pairing of the BB and PB.

Will be glad the see the new apps though, to address the needs of others.

I'm excited for the update but with all said and done, there has to be some advertising when it happens. I have talked a couple of people to buy playbooks and they had no idea how much it can do. I mean advertising that it has flash to the common folk is not going to hack it. They need to push on the stuff that puts the other tablets to shame, and trust me it isn't the flash for how much I like it.

It looks great and since I got mine on release day, anticipation and expectation will turn into realization!! Oh the joy!

just deliver...

Highly anticipated features looks great. I can't wait for the february update to get released.

I like the Bridge and Playbook combination! I presume that, after it's released, the native suite can be turned off and that I'll be able to continue to rely on my phone's e-mail, contacts, to-do list, calendar etc via the Bridge.

I'm glad to see this finally happening, but I do think RIM has a lot of work ahead of them if they want to have an impact on marketshare..

And for gods sake can we please invest some money on the UI? Android 4.0, iOS & even HP's WebOS look amazing..

When you have so much competition everything needs to be perfect, from user experience to User Interface Design..

Hire some real designers..

In the electronic shops here in the GTA I have come across many moms and dads asking about that BB PlayBook presumbly to be put under the Christmas tree and at these firesale prices ..why not !. Hopefully Rim will know how to promote these new features and promise a free update to OS 2.0 during the festive season. Might even get a few new BB converts if they play their cards right this time.

is this why my bridge email isn't working? fix it!

Am I the only one that noticed the BlackBerry 9981 in the compatible devices list for Gist?

I would like to see Netflix and Kindle on the PB. Native email? Well, I have bridge and frankly there isn't much chance I'd be away from my phone using the PB for email. When there is native calendar and contacts, would this sync with the phone? If not, its redundant, IMHO. I like the PB for the ability to play flash and HDMI to a larger screen. Hoping the February update is awesome.

can't wait to get this on my PlayBook!

Next question: now that we're supposedly getting native PIM apps (like BlackBerries have had for a decade), can we also get autocorrect (like BlackBerries have had for a decade) since we'll presumably be typing stuff now?

You know what would be awesome? If they made a Dock that had Full size SD card slot, about 3 or 4 Full size USB (idk if 3.0 is possible), AND Full size HDMI out. Then you could connect the PB to a 24" monitor and work or play out of it via a Bluetooth or USB Keyboard and Mouse! That would be legendary! Oviously tey would have to enable USB hosting but it would ROCK! Are you listening RIM? I just gave you an idea to something the others haven't done yet but soon enough someone will come up with...so GET MOVING.

You know, the more I think of this, the more I'm inclined to think that I wont use any of these apps/features. As another poster said, rarely am I away from my phone and if I really need to drop an email, I'm inclined to do so from the phone then my Playbook. Even now, I rarely access my email, calendar, or any of the Bridge Apps as I find it more efficient to simply use my phone.

Granted, not everyone is like me and I'm sure being able to advertise "it does email now" will go a long way to stop the constant whinning from the Playbook's distractors. But the more I use my tablet, the less I want to use email on it. I actually like not having another device to which my email can be accessed.

But as for spell check, mkv suport, AD2P, and the official Blackberry Bluetooth keyboard - I say bring it on. Following that, the ability to wirelessly connect to a wireless LCD projector would also be sweet - sending power point through the tablet to the projector without wires would simply be too cool!!!!!!

I went to the BlackBerry innovative forum in NJ and it might not look so much different or better in those pictures, but honestly there are a lot of features that make the contacts, calander, and email better. Someone asked about the briefcase, I don't know if anyone answered but that's only there when your connected using BlackBerry balance. For anyone that will be using that feature it works really well with making sure your "work" files, emails amd sucharent able to get mixed up with your Personal stuff, very secure. You will need a second passwoed to enter your business files and certain apps/programs that are work related. There will also be a new section in app world for business apps, and also where apps your IT department pushes work apps to your device. There will be some optional apps that you might want to downloas but then decide you want. to delete which is fine. Then there are mandatory apps that cannot be deleted.Its really pretty cool. There is so much new stuff they went over mostly enterprise, but a lot for consumers also. One of my favorite new features is in the calander App. When you open up your calander you will notice that the size of the numbers are bigger than others according to how much stuff you have planned for that date. For example if you have nothing planned on yoir calander for Nov.20,21,&22 but you have a real busy day on the 23rd the number 23 will be a lot bigger then the dates you have nothing planned. If you only have one or two things planned on another date the number of that date would only be a little bigger then the normal default size. Well I hope you guys were able to understand the way I explained it, I'm falling asleep as we speak. I was glad I decided to attend the forum it showed me RIM has some nice added features coming in the (hopefully soon) future! Keep up the good work!

just do it... i keep my fingers crossed for this. i dont wanna get disappointed anymore