Difference Between Toshiba Thrive and BlackBerry PlayBook

Toshiba Thrive is an Android Tablet released during the second quarter of 2011. BlackBerry PlayBook is the tablet released by the famous BlackBerry Company, Research In Motion during the first quarter of 2011. Following is a comparison on the similarities and an evaluation of the differences between the two devices.

Toshiba Thrive

Toshiba Thrive is a 10 inch Android tablet by Toshiba. The device was released during the second quarter of 2011 in USA. Toshiba Thrive joins the Android tablet bandwagon with this new entrant to the market with Android 3.1 installed. The device features a full size USB port, mini USB port, an SD card slot, a removable battery, and HDMI ports. The tablet is 0.6 inches thick and weighs 800 g. The tablet has a 5 mega pixel rear facing camera, which may not be best for low light photography, but does a satisfactory job otherwise. The Thrive also has a 2 mega pixel front facing camera. Toshiba Thrive sports a multi touch screen with 1280 x 800 resolution. The device is complete with slip resistant surface, which will come in handy for a “mobile” device.

Toshiba Thrive has a dual core 1 GHz processor (Nvidia Tegra 2) with 1 GB memory. The tablet is available with 8 GB, 16 GB and 32 GB internal storage. At the moment Toshiba Thrive supports Wi Fi and Bluetooth for data transfer. Toshiba Thrive comes in 6 different colors.

Toshiba Thrive is not exceptional in terms of power management. With a looping video with Wi Fi on Toshiba Thrive reportedly lasts nearly 6.5 hours, which is below average to its many competitors. The Thrive responds to many hand gestures promptly. The keyboard with Toshiba Thrive is also very responsive, while the option to give input by drawing the letters is also available. As Thrive has Android Honeycomb installed switching between applications and navigation is also similar to other tabs with the same operating system; satisfactory.

Toshiba Thrive has many necessary and useful applications pre-installed. It saves not so tech savvy users the trouble of browsing through Android market place and getting into trouble with installing applications. Some of the paid applications come installed with Toshiba Thrive; namely LogMeIn Ignition ($29.99), Quickoffice ($24.99), and Kaspersky Tablet Security ($19.95 per year). The Toshiba Thrive also comes with a good collection of free games and applications installed as well. An e-book reader called “Book Place” is also included along with “Google books”. Viewing and editing word documents, presentations and spread sheets are made possible by the paid QuickOffice application installed in the device. Clients for Social Networking (Facebook, Twitter) are not available in Toshiba Thrive.

Users can also download applications as necessary from the Android market and other markets with Android applications supporting Android 3.1. With a huge developer community behind Android this is not an issue for Toshiba Thrive users.

Toshiba Thrive got the default Gmail client available for Android platform. A native email application is also available.

The browser with Toshiba Thrive is the Android browser and the new Firefox browser can also be downloaded to the device. However the performance of the browser when displaying flash content was reportedly problematic.

With Android 3.1 on board, Toshiba Thrive can make use of the new Android music application coupled with two speakers, which benefits from SRS audio enhancements for dynamic surround sound. Thrive allows to capture 720 p video. While video capturing may not be the best in the market, improved color and image quality is available for both HD and other video playback in Toshiba Thrive.

In Conclusion, it can be said that Toshiba Thrive is a good tablet for consumer market. It may be best for every day web browsing and entertainment.

Blackberry PlayBook

Blackberry PlayBook is a tablet by Research In Motion; the famous Blackberry company. The device was released to consumer market during the first quarter of 2011. In contrary to the flood of Android tablets in the market, Blackberry PlayBook offers a different flavor. The operating system in PlayBook is QNX. QNX is an embedded system based operating system used even in fighter jets. Blackberry PlayBook is a 7 inch tablet, which is reportedly lighter than iPad 2. With a 3 mega pixel front facing camera and a 5 mega pixel rear facing camera Blackberry PlayBook is satisfactory for taking photographs as well as video conferencing. The camera application allows switching between video mode and picture mode. The Blackberry PlayBook has a multi touch screen with 1024 x 600 resolution.

Blackberry PlayBook has a dual core 1 GHz processor with 1 GB memory and internal storage is available in 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB. Research In Motion has introduced an array of accessories for the tablet as well. A number of cases are available for RIM to protect Blackberry PlayBook in style. A convertible case is also available which can be doubled as a stand as well. BlackBerry rapid charging Pod, Blackberry rapid Travel charger and Blackberry Premium charger are the other set of accessories available and sold separately for BlackBerry PlayBook.

Switching between applications is quite easy in BlackBerry PlayBook. This is done by simply swiping inwards from left or right side of the screen. A tap maximizes the application and throwing it up will cause the application to shut down. The responsiveness of the operating system is also much commended. Blackberry QNX facilitates a multi-touch screen, which recognizes many interesting gestures any tablet user will love. The operating system supports gestures such as swipe, pinch, drag and many variants of them. If a user swipe from bottom of the screen to the middle it will be possible to see the home screen. If a user swipe left or right while viewing an application it’s possible to switch between applications. A virtual keyboard is available for text input, however finding special characters and punctuation needs some efforts. Precision is also another factor where the keyboard can improve.

BlackBerry PlayBook comes with many necessary applications pre-installed. A customized Adobe PDF reader is available, which reportedly has quality performance. There for it is no surprise that PlayBook comes with a complete suite capable of handling documents, spreadsheets and slide presentations. Using Word to Go and Sheet To Go applications users can create word documents and spread sheets. However, slide presentation will not be possible to create while excellent view functionality is provided.

“Blackberry Bridge” allows the Tablet to be connected with blackberry phone with Blackberry OS 5 or above. However, the performance of this application is below expectations. The calendar application will unlock only if it’s used with a Blackberry smart phone.

Users can download more applications from “App World”; where applications for BlackBerry PlayBook are available. However comparing with its competitors, App World needs to come up with more applications for the platform.

The email client available with BlackBerry PlayBook is called “Messages”, which is quite misleading to SMS messaging. Basic functionality such as searching email, selecting multiple messages and message tagging is available in the installed client.

The browser of BlackBerry PlayBook is much raved for its performance. The pages reportedly load fast and users are able to navigate even before the entire page is loaded which is really a neat functionality. The browser boasts Flash Player 10.1 support and heavy flash sites are loaded with smoothness. Zooming is also reportedly very smooth.

The native music application available with BlackBerry PlayBook categorizes music by song, artist, album and genre. It is a generic music application which allows minimizing if user needs to access another application. The video application allows users to access all their downloaded and recorded videos in one place. An option to upload videos from the device is not available. Quality of recorded video is acceptable.

In Conclusion, BlackBerry PlayBook will be a good tablet device for the enterprise market. Though names with the “Play” moniker, BlackBerry PlayBook is perhaps more suitable for a more business minded users.

What is the difference Between Toshiba Thrive and BlackBerry PlayBook?

Toshiba Thrive is a 10 inch Android tablet by Toshiba. BlackBerry PlayBook is somewhat smaller since it’s only a 7 inch tablet by Research in Motion. Additionally BlackBerry PlayBook runs on QNX operating system. While BlackBerry PlayBook impressively weighs less than iPad 2, Toshiba Thrive remains heavier claiming nearly 800 g. Both devices have multi touch screens, however BlackBerry PlayBook has a 1280 x 600 resolution and Toshiba Thrive‘s resolution is 1280 x 800. Both BlackBerry PlayBook and Toshiba Thrive have 5 mega pixel rear facing cameras. The front facing camera in BlackBerry PlayBook is 3 megapixels and the same in Toshiba Thrive is only 2 mega pixels. Both BlackBerry PlayBook and Toshiba Thrive have 1 GHz dual core processors and 1 GB memory. BlackBerry PlayBook is available in 3 versions such as 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB internal storage while Toshiba Thrive is available in 8 GB, 16 GB and 32 GB versions. Performance of the browser available in BlackBerry PlayBook is much raved for the good performance in loading sites with flash content but complaints were raised on the same with Toshiba Thrive. BlackBerry PlayBook is designed to be used coupled with BlackBerry smart phones, but Toshiba Thrive doesn’t have such a facility. But, Toshiba Thrive has an advantage over BlackBerry PlayBook with its full size USB ports, SD card slot and HDMI port. In comparison, BlackBerry PlayBook only has a Mini- USB port and a mini- HDMI port. Applications for BlackBerry PlayBook can be downloaded from BlackBerry AppWorld, while applications for Toshiba Thrive can be found in plenty from the Android market as well as many third party Android markets.