BlackBerry PlayBook owners will soon be able to turn their tablets into netbooks using a Mini Keyboard with Convertible Case, an official accessory which manufacturer Research in Motion plans to launch later this month.
There are plenty of unofficial keyboard accessories on the market for the PlayBook, but this one is the real deal, officially licensed and made by RIM. The convertible case contains a PlayBook-sized full QWERTY keyboard with multi-touch mouse pad, and allows you to slot in your tablet and turn up the productivity, effectively giving you a little computer.
The Mini Keyboard itself is the same size and shape as the PlayBook tablet, and contains its own battery, which can last for up to 30 days on a single charge, provided by the PlayBook’s Micro USB charger. From what we can tell the tablet and keyboard don’t connect mechanically like the ASUS Transformer Prime, so the keyboard’s extensive battery life probably won’t be transferrable to the tablet itself.
Once you’ve hooked up your PlayBook to the keyboard accessory, you’ll be able to use the multi-touch mouse pad to control your tablet fully. Multi-touch functionality means scrolling, right and left clicking and highlighting, just as you would do with a laptop.
Now that the 2.0 software update has landed on the PlayBook, bringing with it the missing native email client, a portable keyboard accessory completes the kit, making it a great option for working and communicating on the move. The keyboard accessory is said to retail at £80 ($119/€99), so if you picked up a 16GB PlayBook in the recent sales for £169, you could effectively have a brilliantly portable and effective tablet/netbook combo for under £250.
With the recent news of a 3G+ upgraded BlackBerry PlayBook being on the horizon as well, things are looking rosy for PlayBook owners. Have you been waiting for an official keyboard accessory to join your beloved BlackBerry tablet?
The BlackBerry Mini Keyboard with Convertible Case is expected to go on sale this month on March 23rd.
UPDATE: Research in Motion has now officially announced the keyboard accessory, which is just 6mm thick. The keyboard and tablet connecting using Bluetooth, to which RIM has added 128-bit data encryption to ensure your key strokes can’t be logged by any malicious software.
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Source: N4BB