Inside BlackBerry » remote control

10 Ways to Use BlackBerry Bridge with your BlackBerry PlayBook

Luke Reimer — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 18:55:52 +0000

BlackBerry® Bridge™ provides a unique way to connect your BlackBerry® smartphone and your BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, opening up a world of possibilities and interactions. With BlackBerry Bridge allowing such a range of functionality, Ty from the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog and I thought we’d run through a few of the ways that you can use it to enhance your work, entertainment, sharing, communication, and more. With a variety of mobile devices at our fingertips, it’s important that they work together. Check out our top 10 ways to use BlackBerry Bridge with your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet below:

1. Extending BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) to your BlackBerry PlayBook

The BlackBerry Messenger experience on your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet features an enhanced interface and solid functionality. If you’re using your tablet and a BBM message comes into your BlackBerry smartphone, simply pop open the BlackBerry Bridge folder on your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and tap “BBM” to read it. I particularly find BBM via BlackBerry Bridge on my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to be useful for viewing photos, voice notes, or files sent to me from BBM contacts.

2. Stay connected without Wi-Fi®

It’s a pretty connected world out there with Wi-Fi at work, home, coffee shops, and airports. When you’re on the move, however, it’s important to stay online without skipping a beat. Thanks to BlackBerry Bridge, my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet comes with me and remains connected the entire time through the wireless radio on my BlackBerry smartphone.

Remote Control feature in BlackBerry Bridge 2.0 lets you control your BlackBerry PlayBook with your BlackBerry smartphone

Ty Williams — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:18:42 +0000

Please welcome Julianna, writing a guest post today on a great new feature of BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0…read on! – Ed.

One of my favorite new features in BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 is the ability to use my BlackBerry® smartphone to control my BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. This feature is particularly useful when my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is connected to an HDMI®-equipped TV. At home, I can control my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet from my couch and have the contents displayed on my TV with the audio output through my home theater system. At a meeting at work, I can apply the same functionality to share documents, web pages, videos, slideshows and more on a large display screen for everyone to see.

If you haven’t tried this feature already, keep reading to learn how you can do this too!

BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 is here

BlackBerry — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:05:01 +0000

I’m excited to announce that the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0 software update officially launched worldwide today. In October, I spoke to you about some of the key features you could expect with the release of BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0. Today, I’m proud to tell you – we’ve delivered them.

As you will see, we’ve made updates and enhancements to some of the things you’ve told us you like the most. We’ve also brought you some new, highly anticipated features that you’ll find only on BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Let me tell you about my favorite BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 features:

All-New Built-In Functionality

I have to say, the features I’m most excited about with this launch are built-in email, calendar and contacts. Unique to BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0, you can now quickly manage all of your email accounts with a unified inbox, manage your schedule with new features like a People View of your day (which lets you quickly see everyone who is on your agenda for that day), and view your contacts as a social hub that contains information from popular social networks including Facebook®, Twitter®, and LinkedIn®.

Social Integration in Calendar & Contacts

The built in calendar is designed to pull in the information that matters to you from your social networks and make it available where and when you need it. Contact cards are dynamically populated with the latest real-time information from your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts to create a consolidated view of your contacts most recent updates.

BlackBerry Bridge

Another feature I’m excited for you to try is the new BlackBerry Bridge functionality that allows you to use your BlackBerry smartphone as a remote control for your PlayBook. I’ve used this feature both for presentations in the office, and at home with my PlayBook tablet connected to my television.

Explore tablet hardware
Using the tablet interface
BlackBerry Bridge
Personalization

Docs To Go
Print To Go
Calendar
Contacts

Video Player
Messages
Video Chat
Browsing the web

Open On

Although it’s hard to choose only four, I will say that Open On definitely makes my list of favorite BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 features. This convenient functionality allows you to open your documents, photos and links from your BlackBerry smartphone onto your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet with one click. I often use Open On to review documents (PowerPoint, Word, and PDF) that people send me on my BlackBerry smartphone. It’s a great way to combine the convenience of my BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 and the big screen on my PlayBook tablet.

These are just a few of the reasons I’m excited about today’s launch, and they’re just some of the great features that PlayBook OS 2.0 has to offer. Following the 2012 Consumer Electronics show, we heard a lot of great feedback on PlayBook OS 2.0 with reviews from Team BlackBerry. I’d love to hear what you think now that the software update has officially launched.

This post on the BlackBerry Help blog will provide more information about how to get started with your new PlayBook OS 2.0 update.

- David J. Smith, SVP, Mobile Computing, Research In Motion