Last week RIM fired back at Kaufman Brothers analyst Shaw Wu for stating the unreleased BlackBerry PlayBook tablet has a poor battery life. RIM wrote “Any testing or observation of battery life to date by anyone outside of RIM would have been performed using pre-beta units that were built without power management implemented. RIM is on track with its schedule to optimize the BlackBerry PlayBook’s battery life and looks forward to providing customers with a professional grade tablet that offers superior performance with comparable battery life.”
Wu stated the poor battery life is due to the QNX OS because it “wasn’t originally designed for mobile environments but rather for devices like network equipment and automobiles”. But today another report from analyst Wu about the same battery life claim. This time it’s not just the QNX OS but it could also be Adobe Flash that’s draining the battery.
Wu stated that “Based on further data points we have picked up, we would be very surprised if PlayBook matches anywhere near the battery life of the iPad at 10 hours unless it uses a larger battery… In addition, from our understanding, the poor battery life of early PlayBook units may be due to its incorporation of Adobe Flash. As seen in recent tests for the new MacBook Air, use of Flash can cut battery life in half. It should be no surprise to anyone that our checks indicate Adobe is furiously working on reducing Flash’s consumption of resources to make it a viable mobile platform vs. HTML5 that both Apple and Google are moving toward.”
Wu also stated that he expects the same 6-hour battery life that the Samsung Tab is currently getting.
Source: Barrons
