BlackBerry PlayBook...

[tha_bandit]

^

Furthermore, the company says that only a few went out to customers and that most are still in distribution, so with any luck you'll never have to deal with this problem to begin with.

[Grogador]

Fiddled with a Playbook for a few hours yesterday, it's really good! The size is perfect, the camera/video/mic is great, the interface is decent, active bezel is pimp... the best part is that RIM is good for fixing/updating/tweaking with software updates, excited to see what else it'll do soon

[supe]

Yeah I played with it too, its nice to see something completely different in the UI. Its super easy to use and I could see getting used to it pretty fast.

[Sugarphreak]

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[ercchry]

Mine retired itself cause I didn’t use it for a while and the battery was so drained it wouldn’t charge again... probably cause I didn’t have that somewhat proprietary charger it can with anymore cause an animal chewed it... regular usb charger would work for normal charging... but not enough to bring it back from the dead... got it back once though... but it took like 2hrs of plugging it in over and over every 20sec cause that’s all it would charge for before stopping

[Sugarphreak]

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[ZenOps]

Mine is still working! You definitely have to remember to always keep it plugged in though.

I would be my main driver today if it only played pokemon go. Thing is built like a tank.

[rage2]

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However, all of this is secondary to the main reason I have kept them around.

They have had the most amazing video conferencing ability of any devices I've ever used; all routed through secure and reliable Blackberry servers. In any country, with the slowest shittiest connection, I can always get reliable and secure video chat going within seconds. The other device wakes from sleep and starts ringing, it is just the most easy to use and bullet proof system I've ever used. Anytime I've traveled for long periods of time, I usually set up a video chat in my hotel room for the evening and it is like my wife is in the other room going about her business. The ability to talk to somebody as if they are right there next to you from any place within a room is astonishing. I'd say it isn't even so much for chatting as it is nice to hear my wife in the background doing dishes or watching TV.

You just can't do that with phones; they heat up and kill the battery in an hour or so, the microphone pickup isn't optimized for rooms, the connection almost always drops and becomes spotty, and the sound quality is garbage. Using a Laptop for 5 or 6 hours of ambient skype chat is also not really practical; it goes into power saving mode cutting off your connection and all the fans start whirring away like a horde of angry bees, plus they are not as easy to bring around with you as they will eat through batteries in that time pretty quick so it has to remain plugged in. To be honest, I can't think of a good option for a replacement for video chat.

But sadly, as of April 1st, 2018 (or maybe 2017), the BB video chat servers were finally shut down

So that is pretty much it, I think I need to retire my playbooks. I feel sad because they seem like they still have a lot of life left in them.

You just described an insecure iPad with FaceTime haha. Our kids use their iPads the same way, as a background portal to elsewhere. I use it whenever I travel as well.

The reason why I say BB is insecure is because it's routed through their servers, with them knowing the key, and giving it up to authorities when asked. Apple's implementation is encrypted point to point, with keys only known by the 2 parties, so nobody can ever see your sexing.

[Sugarphreak]

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[Sugarphreak]

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