Here is the lastest product released by Motorola.
The Motorola Xoom is the first tablet to touchdown with Android 3.0,Honeycomb, the Google operating system designed for tablet devices. It’s more than just the first tablet to arrive with a new version of Android - it’s the device that Google rubberstamped, it’s the device that they designed and refined Honeycomb with. In short, the Motorola Xoom is both the showcase and the development device for Android tablets, much like the Google Nexus Swas for Gingerbread.
As such it’s the Honeycomb device that has had the most attention, but being first off the line comes with some drawbacks, as we’ll see. There is a great weight of responsibility on the shoulders of Motorola’s 10.1-inch tablet: people are using it as a yardstick by which to measure the success of Android tablets against the Apple iPad, a comparison that isn't completely fair (not that you care about ethics when handling over your cash) and one that is likely to shift dramatically during the Xoom's life.
The Xoom is distinctly Motorola and even without the branding you’d be hard pressed to think it was anything else, even on a device that is essentially a flat slab. You get some of the look a feel of the Motorola Defy, the slightly tactile top covering and rounded corners especially.
It measures 249.1 x 167.8 x 12.9mm and offers up a screen that is 10.1-inches on the diagonal, with a high resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. That gives it a pixel density of 149ppi. This means it is a small step above the iPad 2 in terms of size, resolution and pixel density, for those that want to mark the scorecard. However, it doesn’t quite have the vibrancy of the iPad’s IPS display, so it is much of a muchness as they say, and like the iPad, viewing the display outdoors on the bright day is nigh on impossible.
Across the bottom of the Xoom you’ll find a run of connections, including Micro-USB for data transfer, a DC input for the power supply and a central micro HDMI connection. One oddity is that you can’t use the Micro-USB for charging, which means you’ll always have to drag around the charger. On the top of the Xoom you’ll find the 3.5mm headphone jack and a slide-out cover which is where the microSD card and SIM card fit.
The Xoom is pretty weighty in the hand, tipping the scales at 730g. This makes it a noticeable strain when holding it one-handed, although at only 130g heavier than the iPad there isn’t really that much in it real terms, but it is 20% heavier. You’ll find yourself resting it on your lap most of the time when in use, or perched on your knees in bed - such is the life of a tablet. With that weight, however, comes a feeling of solid build quality.
Power the Motorola Xoom on and you are greeted by the sophisticated face of Android 3.0. It’s dark and serious, it looks and feels technologically advanced and a little geeky compared to the simplistic approach of Apple iOS or the awkwardly shoe-horned Android 2.2 that we’ve seen on tablets so far. We’ve written a lot about Android 3.0 Honeycomb in our reviewhere on Pocket-lint and we’re not going to delve into all those details again here - if you want to know more, just head over and read that review to put the entire OS in context of the device. What we will do is quickly summarise the highlights and talk about the low points.
Honeycomb is a considered approach to tablets and comes with a better user experience than we’ve seen before from Android tablets. The core applications work very well and are well designed to cope with the sorts of thing you might want to do on a tablet. Gmail, Calendar and Contacts come stacked with features and work seamlessly with your Google account(s) once you sign in. The space that the Motorola Xoom offers is put to good use so it is possible to get things done: you’re not merely consuming this information, you get the feeling that managing and using it is achievable too.
Video support is reasonable on the Motorola Xoom, but this being a naked Android device it won’t support all formats out of the box, so the likes of MOV and DivX won’t play. However, it will munch its way through MPEG4 and although the tech specs that come with the Xoom say it supports up to 720p, we did get it playing some higher resolutions satisfactorily. Installing a different player may garner better results, but we suspect that this will be one area of differentiation between manufacturers: some will bundle wider codec support out of the box. As it is, Honeycomb doesn't offer anything to stream video content from a network drive or home server and Motorola hasn't added this functionality. It can be achieved through third-party apps, but given the rise of the popularity of DLNA, it's a feature we'd like to find out of the box.
This new gizmo comes loaded with your core Google Android apps, so you get the excellent Google Maps, and along with the GPS sensor you’ll be able to quickly plot routes and examine maps. The screen size really lends itself to mapping as you get to see a huge overview of where you are, or your route ahead - it supports Google Maps Navigation and Street View as you’d expect, both of which look fantastic on a large screen.
Adding additional applications to your Google tablet comes courtesy of Android Market. This will likely be where rival manufacturers will offer some differentiation, bundling apps or enhancing their in-house apps to suit the big screen. As this is native Android, you essentially don’t get anything outside of the normal Google array.
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