There's something ironic about "PlayBook," the name of RIM's first ever BlackBerry tablet, which was just announced this afternoon. The 7-inch device is in fact meant — like BlackBerry smart phones themselves — for professionals who are much more interested in Work than Play. And then there's the "Book" part of the name: with just the touchscreen and no keyboard, the tablet is as far from an "open-and-close" book as you can get. Come to think of it, isn't "Book" the preferred suffix for laptops made by Apple, the maker of the iPad, which is much more about Play than Work, and is, until Google's tablets are announced, the PlayBook's chief competitor?

O.K., never mind the semantics. Let's get to the details. The PlayBook features a 7-inch, high-definition, 1024x600, multi-touch screen. It's Web browser supports Flash, Adobe Mobile AIR, and WebKit/HTML-5 (take that, Mr. Jobs). It has dual cameras, including one that supports 1080p HD video recording. It's got a 1 GHz dual-core processor, 1 GB RAM, and a new BlackBerry Tablet OS. There's an e-reader, full doc*ment editing, HDMI ports, and can connect via bluetooth to the BlackBerry in your pocket. Unfortunately, it won't be available until "early 2011."

Check out a video preview and more photos after the jump.