Verge’s Jacob Schulman has made a first review of the “new and improved” (( yes, we finally have an email application. No, really! )) Playbook OS 2.0 and it’s give a perfect view of RIMM lack of direction.
Below are some snippets from Schulman article:
” The new Messages app is a central hub for not only email, but LinkedIn and Twitter as well. Twitter direct messages can be sent and received from right within the app, though you still need to use a dedicated app to reply to or compose a tweet.”
“As of now there’s no Facebook integration,[…]”
“You can’t open actual emails in multiple tabs; it’s restricted to drafts for the time being.”
*”The other missing item is true BES support, though BlackBerry Mobile Fusion is an ActiveSync solution that delivers the same functionality with equivalent encryption.”
And i strongly suggest you see the Verge Video. In it, the first 3 minutes is the RIMM representative showing off how you can use your handheld Blackberry to remotely control, open links and browse in your handheld 7″ Playbook…
The only feature in that set that i can find even remotely useful is the presentation remote control. And this only in a very limited set of situations. But why would i really really need a feature to allow me to open a link in a email on the Playbook? Hello? I can just pick up the Playbook, open the email and click the link there, probably the same if not less time spent. If RIMM did it somehow as WebOS did it, with the “Touch to Share” feature then i would see the added benefit, but as of now? It’s near useless.
And RIMM “management” just spent money, engineer’s work time and other development resources going for this instead of trying to fix the absence of the fairly standard features above. I just know they would be right at home in this non-amateur competition.