RIM's PlayBook to be delayed due to battery life issues

 It is amazing how fast information travels these days. I first saw if on Twitter which lead me to this article at Techie.com.ph, which quotes this article at Electronista. A quick search in Google News looking for confirmation results in locating more than a dozen articles on the matter The earliest article I can find on the matter is on Tech Trader Daily, about 15 hours ago. 

"If Research in Motion's BlackBerry PlayBook is to succeed at market the way the company hopes, there are a few engineering hurdles to overcome. The most significant, according to Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu, is the device's relatively poor battery life.

Sources tell him the tablet currently lasts just a few hours per charge, compared with rivals like Samsung's Galaxy Tab, which lasts about six, and the iPad, which lasts upward of 10. If true, that's an untenable situation for RIM, which really needs to hit the mark with the PlayBook, and it may cause a delay of the launch--if only for a bit. 

You can read the rest of this article from CNET here.

Exactly what "just a few hours" is, we are not sure. But we are guessing 3-4. "If only a bit" probably means one or two more months. On December, RIM said the PlayBook would come out in the first calendar quarter of the year, meaning March 2011. Now it is looking to May 2011. By than there will be a whole gaggle of Android Tablet outs, and the newer better Apple iPads should have hit the scene as well.  

We are really interested in the Playbook, with a promised priced of under US$500, it should be a cheaper alternative to the Samsung Galaxy Tab (sans 3G) while providing dual core goodness. By May 2011, those features may be pretty much par for the course.