Extra Android love added to PlayBook OS update

The BlackBerry PlayBook equals love. Android equals freedom. Mix these ingredients together with the PlayBook’s OS 2.1 update and developers get an improved level of Android app compatibility.

From the gods of misfortune and poor planning (RIM) comes a sweet list of features added to the update:

• 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.

Most interesting is how each Android app now gets a window of its own. The PlayBook is a beast when it comes to multi-tasking, this will greatly improve the usability of this exceedingly posh tablet. So, update as soon as you can.