that plans to bring BlackBerry 10 to the PlayBook were canceled sparking fears of the device's potential scrapping. According to BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins, multiple teams had spent "a great deal of time and energy" investigating ways to bring the OS to the device. Ultimately, Heins intervened to cancel the project citing his dissatisfaction with the "level of performance and user experience". While no immediate decisions over the device's future are certain, Heins did promise BlackBerry would "support PlayBook on the existing software platforms and configurations." Encryption Because BlackBerry Bridge accesses mail, calendar, and contacts directly from a tethered BlackBerry phone, the PlayBook meets the same encryption standards as the BlackBerry phone. Some cryptographic components of the BlackBerry OS (kernels, cryptography-related OS and Java modules) are certified under FIPS 140-2, which makes the tablet eligible for use by U.S. federal government agencies. The BlackBerry PlayBook OS2.1 update in September 2012 enabled full-disk encryption on the device, using the same algorithm as previously used that had been limited to the Enterprise kernel handling the tethered content from a paired BlackBerry phone. BlackBerry PlayBook models The first PlayBook was a tablet with Wi-Fi connectivity and a dual core, 1 GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 processor. Customers could purchase the WiFi PlayBook in 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB storage configurations. In June 2012, the 16 GB model was discontinued, however the 32 and 64 GB Wi-Fi versions remained for sale. In August 2012, the PlayBook 4G LTE was released in Canada. It featured a dual-core 1.5 GHz processor, 4G LTE and UMTS/HSPA+ cellular connectivity, and an NFC chip. Unlike the earlier PlayBook model, the PlayBook 4G LTE was only sold through carrier channels. In November 2012, another variant of the 1.5 GHz PlayBook, the PlayBook 3G+, was released in the UK. Unlike the Wi-Fi models, the 4G LTE and 3G+ models are not available in 16 GB or 64 GB versions. Following the launch of the BlackBerry 10 operating system and the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins confirmed that the company was exploring the opportunities for future tablet releases but had not announced further plans in the tablet market but that the PlayBook would not be converted to the new BlackBerry 10 OS, having decided "to stop these efforts and focus on [its] core hardware portfolio" of mobile phones, thereby bringing the PlayBook to its end-of-life. In March 2015,