Android Apps Coming to BlackBerry PlayBook in February: PlayBook OS 2.0 Sneak Peek

BlackBerry Playbook owners will be getting a comprehensive system update in February, Research In Motion announced at the Consumer Electronics Show Monday. The PlayBook OS 2.0 update will be a free download and includes new messaging features and social network integration, among other things.

A unified inbox inside the native messaging app lets people manage multiple e-mail accounts, Twitter and LinkedIn in one place. Additionally, multitasking is enabled within e-mails, and a tabbed e-mail function allows you to write an e-mail and check up on another open e-mail at the same time. The e-mail update includes support for many different fonts and formats, and also a search function and setting e-mail signatures from the tablet.

More social network integration includes a new calendar feature that lets you see the social network information of people you are meeting with. This extends to the contacts app where it adds information from different social networks into each contact's file.

If you have a BlackBerry smartphone, you can now use it as a remote control for your tablet. It can be a keyboard and mouse using the BlackBerry Bridge, and that way you don't have to type on the virtual keyboard. You can open files, messages and Web sites from your phone right on the tablet.

For working on documents, there is updated support for editing charts within spreadsheets and editing presentations. To that end, the new Documents To Go function lets you work on documents in a unique format. You can print documents to your PlayBook and then handle them like they were real sheets of paper right in front of you. That makes it easy to pull in differing formats of content and have them all in one place for easier viewing.

When the new update rolls out, a bevy of new apps will be made available, and that means Android app goodness on your PlayBook. Let us know in the comments if you bought a discount PlayBook or if you're thinking of grabbing one now that Android apps will be part of the deal.