RIM has stated that you cannot use your BlackBerry smartphone’s charger to charge up your PlayBook tablet. Looking at the photo above, you can clearly see the error message, “unable to charge battery with connected source” while plugging in my smartphone wall charger. However, here lately my smartphone charger has saved me and allowed my PlayBook to boot up with juice. Without my smartphone charger, my PlayBook wouldn’t have been able to update with Os 2.0 the first day it was released. Continue reading for the rest of my story.
Here is the quote from RIM’s Helpblog on The Power Button and Charging your BlackBerry PlayBook
If you own a BlackBerry® smartphone, the charger that you use for it is not compatible with your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet charger, however, is capable of charging both a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and a BlackBerry smartphone.
Now, back to my story. My PlayBook Charger is broken so it does not work leaving me with a dead Playbook. So the weekend of OS 2.0 launch beginning Feb 17th I decided to plug in my PlayBook while dead (off) to my smartphone charger. At first the red led light came on for around 10 seconds. After that a yellowish/green light came up with a slow flash. Over night, I turned on the PlayBook and to my surprise it had booted with around 50% battery life. I turned the PlayBook back off and left the house connected to the smartphone charger. When I got home at noon the once yellowish light was now flashing green. The PlayBook booted with 98% battery life. Right now a new PlayBook charger is on it’s way but for now, this is how I am keeping my PlayBook alive. BBE is not responsible for what happens to your PlayBook  but if your PlayBook’s charger has decided to stop working, try using your smartphone charger with your PlayBook shut off. It might take half a day to a full day but rest assure, it should turn on. Once again, do so at your own risk.