You may have a a bit of a wait before your BlackBerry PlayBook can run Android apps, but we can give you a glimpse at how those apps might play -- RIM demonstrated the new Android App Player with several titles on the BlackBerry DevCon stage today, and we taped the whole thing. We have to admit that Pool Break Pro looks pretty speedy despite its 3D roots, and both the Pulse news reader and IMDB app behaved fairly well. Interestingly, it looks like the App Player may support two forms of multitasking, both inside and out: Android programs appear in the PlayBook’s multitasking menu, but also in a second pane of icons in the App Player window itself. If this is how it’ll be at launch, you should potentially be able to swap between Android apps on the fly, even though each one will technically run in the same window. You can also see how simple it could potentially be to port an Android app to the PlayBook, which doesn’t necessarily require any modification of your code; just repackage it using the BlackBerry Nature wrapper, and you’re good to go. See it all for yourself after the break in a quick video!
RIM shows off Android apps running on BlackBerry PlayBook (video)
is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
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