Motorola Xoom Impressions

[The Kernel]

So today I got a pair of the new Motorola Xoom Android tabkets from work (I'm in the mobile development business and I get a lot of this stuff) and I was impressed enough that I thought I'd write up a brief review.

The Xoom is a sweet looking little device, its got pretty amazing asthetics and I really dig the build quality. Of course for this price that should be expected--$600 with contract is a bit steep. Still the Verizon 3G connection is excellent and much better than my 3G ipad.

Performance is great but not consistent. Its obviously not a hardware problem, the Tegra 2 dual core is crazy fast and web browsing is like a dream on this thing. However, Android 3.0 itself seems to still have some performance hiccups on certain thing. Some of them advanced (complex animations) some of them simple (text entry lags a small amount) but its still very usable.

Battery life is stellar--as good or better than the Apple unit. Amazing considering the horsepower.

The screen seeems to not have quite the contrast ratio of the ipad but its got much better pixel density and I love the widescreen form factor. Overall a win for the Xoom.

Some bad things: No flash (yet), software support is still lacking (yes it runs Android apps but many do not run perfectly, although Kindle is fine thank god), and the OS for all the great stuff still feel raw in places. But all of this can easily be fixed as the platform matures, its obviously a couple updates away from being perfectly baked and it does feel a tad rushed.

My recommendation? If you are looking for the best tablet today, the Xoom is certainly it. Its really a great little device, but it doesnt have the 3rd party software that the iPad does yet. Still for the core use cases such as browsing, media consumption, ebook reading, it seems to be an almost perfect little device. Give it Flash, a few great 3rd party apps and more games and you've got a killer platform.

And yes I typed this entire post on a Xoom. Not a bad keyboard at all.

[Darth Fanboy]

I browsed this post from my Xoom. Flash is going to be added in a later update and according to verizon, motorola will be upgrading the hardware to 4g later at no cost.

[xthetenth]

My recommendation? If you are looking for the best tablet today, the Xoom is certainly it. Its really a great little device, but it doesnt have the 3rd party software that the iPad does yet. Still for the core use cases such as browsing, media consumption, ebook reading, it seems to be an almost perfect little device. Give it Flash, a few great 3rd party apps and more games and you've got a killer platform.

What puts it ahead of the iPad? From what I hear the performance and the UI are both really good, and I am a sucker for high res screens, but is there anything else or is one of those not it?

[Lonestar]

What puts it ahead of the iPad? From what I hear the performance and the UI are both really good, and I am a sucker for high res screens, but is there anything else or is one of those not it?

Front and forward facing cameras(well, for the time being), if you're a power user you have more customization options, LTE...

[Executor32]

Don't forget the fact that the screen's made of Gorilla Glass, so you generally won't need a screen protector and you don't have to be as careful with it. Also, the dual-core Tegra 2 processor and 1 GB of RAM (4x that of the iPad) mean it's an absolute beast when it comes to mobile games. In fact, Dungeon Defenders was just updated with a shit-ton of new content just for Tegra 2 devices to take advantage of the increased performance.

Also, you'll be able to view most Internet content, rather than just what Steve Jobs wants for you, as soon as the new version of Flash for Tegra 2 devices is released.

[The Kernel]

My recommendation? If you are looking for the best tablet today, the Xoom is certainly it. Its really a great little device, but it doesnt have the 3rd party software that the iPad does yet. Still for the core use cases such as browsing, media consumption, ebook reading, it seems to be an almost perfect little device. Give it Flash, a few great 3rd party apps and more games and you've got a killer platform.

What puts it ahead of the iPad? From what I hear the performance and the UI are both really good, and I am a sucker for high res screens, but is there anything else or is one of those not it?

A few other nice things:

- The Honeycomb UI feels much more functional and like a genuine replacement for light computing. It has real multi-tasking and doesn't require a PC to do media management or updates (all software updates are OTA).

- The improved widgets are a godsend. I have an entire desktop page taken up by Pulse widgets and they look great. The potential here is even greater--given more aggressive software and the Android approach will really start to shine.

- The Verizon network rocks. My coverage and data rates are far superior to my iPad (I have both devices).

- You get a free 4G LTE upgrade.

- There is built in wi-fi hotspot capability.

- The notifications system is far and away superior to iOS. It really is very intelligently thought out.

- There is a built in microphone. Although there isn't a Google Voice app yet, it is only a matter of time.

- Built in SD card slot. Memory expansions should be trivial.

[The Kernel]

Don't forget the fact that the screen's made of Gorilla Glass, so you generally won't need a screen protector and you don't have to be as careful with it. Also, the dual-core Tegra 2 processor and 1 GB of RAM (4x that of the iPad) mean it's an absolute beast when it comes to mobile games. In fact, Dungeon Defenders was just updated with a shit-ton of new content just for Tegra 2 devices to take advantage of the increased performance.

Also, you'll be able to view most Internet content, rather than just what Steve Jobs wants for you, as soon as the new version of Flash for Tegra 2 devices is released.

The Tegra 2 is really screaming fast. I've tried it on both the Xoom and on a Motorola Atrix I just got in and it is extremely impressive in the performance department. This performance really helps the UI zip along at common usage tasks, although the Atrix seems to exhibit a bit less UI lag (probably due to Honeycomb still needing some optimization).

[The Kernel]

What puts it ahead of the iPad? From what I hear the performance and the UI are both really good, and I am a sucker for high res screens, but is there anything else or is one of those not it?

Front and forward facing cameras(well, for the time being), if you're a power user you have more customization options, LTE...

The camera isn't useless either, it can do video calls using Google Talk quite easily. The open nature of Android also means that adding additional networks like Skype should be easy and you won't be locked into using Facetime.

[Sarevok]

Kernel what is the text input like ? Is it suitable if by chance you have to enter a lot of text such as typing a long email or forum post ?

[The Kernel]

Kernel what is the text input like ? Is it suitable if by chance you have to enter a lot of text such as typing a long email or forum post ?

The keyboard itself is quite good (I typed the first post in this thread on it) and the copy-paste functionality is delightfully overengineered. There are some interesting hiccups though in using it to generate text on a forum that is not optimized for the device (like SDNet for example). Most of it has to do with the text input boxes being a little difficult to navigate properly, especially when quoting text. It is possible to work around this hiccups but it isn't perfect.

One thing the iPad is better at is the magnifying glass approach to going back to an individual character in a block of text. Android doesn't work nearly as seamlessly for this.