Most of our attention upon hearing rumors about RIM’s hardware plans for the rest of the year has been focused on the company’s next wave of smartphones, leaving the tried-and-true BlackBerry OS for a new QNX-based system. Mixed-in with those rumors and leaked roadmaps have been a couple mentions about what RIM might be planning for its tablet lineup. We had heard about the possibility of seeing two such models released this year, with an HSPA+ enabled version for May and a larger 10-inch LTE version closer to the end of the year. A new leak out today suggests that timetable could be way off, with the LTE-enabled PlayBook nearly ready to arrive.

While we’d love to see more than the tiny, cropped image that’s been made available, if only to view the leak in some more context, but what we can see here is pretty unambiguous, claiming that the PlayBook will be getting an LTE version sometime this April.

Beyond that, though there’s little this leak gives us. If there is an LTE PlayBook in April, will it be a cellular-enabled version of the original seven-inch tablet, or is this the rumored 10-inch version arriving early? It seems more likely that RIM would stick with the seven-inch design for now, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t still hope to see a larger LTE PlayBook still on-track for later in the year.

Source: MobileSyrup

Via: phoneArena