There have been rumours and whisperings from various sources that the upcoming Playbook from Research In Motion was suffering from poor battery performance. The company have responded saying that their product will offer ‘superior performance with comparable battery life.”

A few days ago, analyst Shaw Wu of Kaufman Brothers sent a letter to investors voicing his concerns over the unreleased 7 inch Blackberry Playbook tablet's battery life. Wu had stated that he had heard the battery life was just a few hours and would require a ‘bit of reengineering'. If this was the case then the 10 hour life span from the iPad was sure to be a problem for Blackberry.

RIM released the following statement to the press, which we received late last night “Any testing or observation of battery life to date by anyone outside of RIM would have been performed using pre-beta units that were built without power management implemented,” the statement read. “RIM is on track with its schedule to optimize the BlackBerry PlayBook’s battery life and looks forward to providing customers with a professional grade tablet that offers superior performance with comparable battery life.”

RIM CEO Jim Balsillie is confident in the upcoming product saying that their product was way ahead of the iPad “I think the PlayBook redefines what a tablet should do, it is way ahead of the iPad.”

KitGuru says: Fighting talk from the Blackberry team, so lets hope when the reviews hit publication that battery life is at least 6 hours, meaning it can compete with the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

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