BlackBerry Playbook 4G LTE With Better Processor and NFC Confirmed

The BlackBerry World conference is taking palce at the moment in Florida, with RIM’s new CEO Thorstein Heins unveiling the BlackBerry 10 platform and a few features of the new operationg system, as well as giving out the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha phone to developers, during the keynote address.

However a few hours earlier, at a breakfast briefing, website Canadian Reviewer is reporting that the company unveiled the update to the BlackBerry PlayBook which will now include a 4G LTE radio but also a new dual-core 1.5GHz processor. The new upgraded tabelt will also have NFC capability included.

It is still unclear if RIM will stick with Texas Instruments for the new processor, as this was the company which supplied the single-core 1GHz OMAP processor in the original PlayBook.

The updated tablet was expected to be released in the final quarter of 2011 to coincide with the launch of Playbook OS 2.0 but this never happened. It was expected that Heins would make some mention of the new tablet in his keynote, but he failed to make any mention of the new device.

BlackBerry has struggled to sell its PlayBook since launching it at CES 2011, with the tablet shipping initially without native email and calendar apps. RIM has since slashed its price to just £169 for the 16GB version.

The other specs of the PlayBook 4G will likely remain identical to the original. If so, it will measure 194 x 130 x 10mm, weigh 425g, feature a 7in 600 x 1,024 pixel screen, options of 16, 32 or 64GB storage, 1GB of RAM, and a 5 megapxiel camera which able to capture video at 1080p.