No doubt by now if you follow tech, you have heard of the BlackBerry PlayBook. I wrote up my first 48 hours on the PlayBook but I will now start diving into some of the most interesting aspects of it, those that affect end user use cases. The first thing I want to look at is the PlayBook Bridge capability. It is more than a stop-gap feature for mail, contacts and calendar.

What Is the Bridge?

The PlayBook Bridge serves a few purposes and enables the PlayBook user to access and use some of the resources of the BlackBerry smartphone with OS 5 or 6. The user can leverage the phone’s WiFi, 3G, mail, contacts, calendar, browser, and even its SD card files. There are different reasons a user would want to do this and I’ll discuss this in each section.

Bridge Setup

The PlayBook Bridge is relatively simple to setup: enable the PlayBook capability, download the bridge software from App World (if using AT&T, you’ll need to download directly) to the phone, and go through the menu driven exercise. The PlayBook will display a QR code and then you scan it with your phone. My QR code didn’t work so then I went through a manual setup where it scans for devices, you select and are instructed to enter a secret code on both devices.

Once it is setup, new icons magically appear at the bottom of the PlayBook; Messages, Contacts, Calendar, Memopad, Tasks, Bridge Browser, and Bridge Files.

Bridge Messages

Open “Messages” on the PlayBook and you see the phone’s messages in a format similar to the iPad and Xoom media tablets. Do an action on the PlayBook and it is actually happening on the phone, whether you are reading, composing, deleting, editing, or saving. New message notifications will appear in the upper left-hand of the PlayBook screen as if it were on the PlayBook.

Bridge Calendar

Open “Calendar” on the PlayBook and you see the phone’s messages in a format similar to the iPad and Xoom. Do an action on the PlayBook and it is actually happening on the phone, whether you are creating an event, accepting one, or deleting one. Calendar notifications will appear in the upper left-hand of the PlayBook screen as if it were on the PlayBook.

Bridge Contacts, Tasks, and Memopad

Open “Contacts”, “Tasks”, or “Memopad” on the PlayBook and you see it in a larger, size appropriate presentation. Do an action on the PlayBook and it is actually happening on the phone, whether you are viewing, editing, adding, or deleting.

Bridge Browser

This is where it gets interesting…. Click on the Bridge Browser and you are essentially browsing through your phone’s browser connection, but more importantly, sharing its wireless connection; WiFi or 3G.

One benefit here is that you don’t need a tethering contract from your telco to leverage 3G nor did you have to pay the extra $129 to pay for the 3G hardware on the tablet. Second benefit is that if you’ve already satisfactorily setup all your WiFi connections on your phone, you don’t have to do this again on the tablet.

There are incremental enterprise benefits as well. The enterprise gets the same high level of security on the tablet that they architected with the phone maybe a few years back. Anyone familiar with PEAP/LEAP security, GeoTrust Primary CA certification, or EAP-CHAP v2 “inner link security” knows what I am talking about here. This isn’t like connecting to the Internet at a cafe, it’s the corporate enterprise and the IT guy’s butt is on the line to guard the storehouses. Get a major security breach and the company issues a release on how they disclosed credit card numbers and personal medical information. And that’s not fun. So, the enterprise systems see the pre-approved BlackBerry “phone” coming in, not the BlackBerry tablet.

Bridge Files

This feature allowed me to access the files on the phone’s SD card. So if I had downloaded a document on the phone which I often do, I could open it up and review it on the larger 7″ screen when it was most appropriate. I could see this as very beneficial when on an airplane and you get that document just as the flight attendants are commanding that all devices need to be turned off. If you had a traditional media tablet, you would be out of luck, but with the PlayBook when you are allowed to get out of your seat or turn on your tablet, you just bridge to it and review it.

One perceived disadvantage that could actually be a designed security feature is that I cannot actually edit the document or transfer the file I received from the phone to the PlayBook. Interestingly, I can save a file I am editing onto the phone.

Bridge Plusses

- Same level of security and authentication on hardened BlackBerry phone now available to tablet in web, email, contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes

- Save money, potentially lots on 3G/4G hardware and wireless broadband service contracts

- Not reliant on a WiFi or wireless connection to see same email, contacts, tasks, calendar, files between devices

Bridge Minuses

- Sometimes flaky with dropped connections. [UPDATE: I loaned the unit to some colleagues who had no connection issues.  They all had later model, OS 6 devices.]

- Cannot access files on PlayBook from phone

- Cannot actually transfer file from phone to PlayBook

Conclusion

While many have missed this, I think the PlayBook Bridge feature is much more than a stopgap for not delivering an integrated email, calendar, and contacts application. I see it as part of a strategy. This has more to do with an understanding of what enterprise IT really wants from tablet computing. They want security, lowest possible cost of ownership (cradle to grave), protection of infrastructure investment, and productive and happy “users” who don’t cry foul to the VPs and the CEO. The PlayBook Bridge assists with many IT desires, albeit a bit complex for the end user.

Have a comment or question, please let me know. Next, I will be writing on what I would like to see with bridge functionality in the future.

Pat Moorhead is Corporate Vice President and Corporate Marketing Fellow and a Member of the Office of Strategy at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

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