The Blackberry Playbook is a brilliant piece of kit; it has good hardware, a good design and good prospects. But what it does not have is a good developer base.
Bring in Alien Dalvik, a tool that will allow the Playbook to boot and run Android applications, with essentially no difference to the Android app, and no need to rewrite the app for the Playbook.
Blackberry officially stated that they would be taking advantage of the fact that the Playbook had this feature, and have actively been developing the Android app player. As you can see from the video, there are some usability issues with the App Player and it is clearly an unfinished product, but it does look promising.
Well this leaked earlier today, and was swiftly taken down by Blackberry due to the stability issues and the fact it is an old version. RIM confirmed that an “older version” of the software was posted to their site in error and commented: “We recommend that users refrain from downloading and installing this software since it is outdated and non-functional in many respects. The official beta release of the Android App Player for the BlackBerry Playbook is on track for release later this summer.”
Although RIM have taken the app down there will be places to find it online, and we would love to hear your feedback if you manage to give it a go.