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Poynt is one of the developers making a play for the BlackBerry PlayBook, which launched this week. Poynt for PlayBook, available for free in BlackBerry App World beginning today, will soon be offering a unique “send to phone” feature that will let the tablet initiate phone calls and even turn-by-turn directions on a BlackBerry smartphone phone, Poynt told CNET in an exclusive interview.
An alternative to Google Search, Poynt will use a form of tethering to bypass restrictions that bar pairing non-RIM PlayBook apps with your phone via BlackBerry Bridge and Bluetooth. Instead, Poynt will use RIM’s push notifications to cause an actionable alert to pop up on the phone’s screen. The result? People finding businesses with Poynt will be able to click the tablet app to place a BlackBerry call, add a phone number to the phone’s address book, add entries to the phone’s calendar, and trigger turn-by-turn directions.
“Send to phone” is a workaround for features that are currently unavailable on the PlayBook tablet, but Poynt’s tethering effectively makes the tablet the phone’s remote control for these specific functions.
Poynt will be keeping pairing with BlackBerry for now, but hinted that it might one day expand to Android phones as well. Keep in mind that the feature is not yet available in the new Poynt for PlayBook app released today. Instead, it’s bound for the next update, which will hopefully arrive early next week.
