New Android Functionality Added to Blackberry Playbook in Beta Developers Update

By Briley (Google)

The Blackberry Playbook received a Beta developers update on May 31, which introduced new Android functionality and features. The developers update now adds support for Android applications running in their own window, which will allow more native Android apps to run on the Playbook.

Of course, the update added several other improvements like HTML5 optimization, full device encryption support and many others.

The full list of improvements and software changes, which were originally listed by Crackberry, are as follows:

• Improved HTML5 support
• Portrait support for Email, Calendar and Contacts
• Improved folder support including IMAP folder support
• Full device encryption is now supported, so that the whole device and personal partition can be secure.
• Screenshots are now saved in lossless PNG format.
• Each Android app will now run in its own window. This greatly improves the user experience and consistency among the other application runtimes.
• Access to the Camera hardware is now supported for Android apps, allowing many more application types to work on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet.
• In-App Payment is now supported through the BlackBerry Payment SDK, so Android applications can include virtual items for sale in their applications.

In order to recieve the update, you must register your Blackberry pin and install the update within a 24 hour time window. It should also be noted that because the update itself is both a Beta and developers version, it could possibly introduce some new bugs and issues. This means that any users who are not interested in working with potentially unstable software on their Playbook, should stay away.

The update changes the OS build to version 2.1.0.560 and is currently live.