Motorola+Xoom

=**Motorola Xoom**=

**by Matthew Del Tufo**
Since the whole tablet craze has started, Apple has dominated the market with their iPad, and soon to be iPad 2. Now, however, the first real competitor has come into the picture, the Xoom. It was released earlier this year in February, and is seen by many as very worthy attempt to be competitive in this growing market.

The Motorola Xoom is the world's first Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet. Honeycomb is Google's tablet-optimized version of their highly successful Android mobile operating system. This is not like previous Android tablets such as the Samsung Galaxy, and Dell's Streak, that used systems that were mainly meant for mobile phones which, in the end, did not deliver a great experience for users. Honeycomb has proven to be more flexible and intuitive by comparison.

The Xoom has a sleek black design with a glass front accompanied by a matte backing. It weighs in at 730 grams, or 1.6 lbs, and has a 10.1-inch wide screen (16:10) high definition display (1200 x 800 resolution). It is just a tad but thinner than the iPad coming in at 12.9mm, and it has two cameras, a front one, 2-mega-pixels, for videoconferencing, and one in the back, 5-mega-pixels, for shooting and capturing video in 720p HD. Battery life, again, is similar to the iPad lasting for about 10 hours for video. A key difference between the Xoom and the iPad would be that of he docking port. The Xoom's docking port sits on the bottom which in turn makes the device sit and landscape view unlike the iPad which sits in portrait view. The Xoom also has a memory of 32 GB of on board user memory, and contains the NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor with each core running at 1GHz.

For workers on the move, the Motorola Xoom provides constant connectivity to the likes of Gmail or Exchange e-mail. It allows for opening and editing of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. In addition, viewing calendars and sending out appointments or meeting notices are done at mobile broadband speeds. Its mobile hotspot capability provides an online connection for up to five other Wi-Fi enabled devices, however, this requires a hotspot data plan.

The browser has been modified now allowing tabbed windows and introduces other options that will leave less evidence of where, or what, you have been searching for.. The home screen is easily customizable. You can add widgets that provide a window onto your e-mail in-box or calendar along with other settings. The Xoom does runs existing Android apps such as the popular game Angry Birds. Amazon.com’s Kindle app is also functional as well. You can safely bet that more apps specifically tailor made for the Honeycomb are without a doubt coming.

Here is a short table comparing some key features between the Motorola Xoom, Apple iPad, and the Samsung Galaxy tablets. Ghz processor || Apple A4 processor 1 GHz || ARM Cortex A8 1GHz ||
 * ||~ Motorola Xoom ||~ Apple iPad ||~ Samsung Galaxy ||
 * OS || Android 3.0 || los 4 || Android 2.2 ||
 * Processor || Nvidia Tegra 2: 1
 * Display || 10.1 inch || 9.7 inch || 7 inch ||
 * Resolution || 1200x800 || 1024x798 || 1024x600 ||
 * Memory || 32 GB || 16/32 GB || 16/32 GB ||
 * RAM || 1 GB || 256 MB || 512 MB ||
 * Battery || 10 hrs video || 10 hours || 7 hours ||
 * Weight || 1.61 lbs || 1.6 lbs || 0.838 lbs ||

media type="youtube" key="SAseudjhvD0" height="390" width="640"

References:

1. http://hken.ibtimes.com/articles/98141/20110106/motorola-zoom-tablet-ces-2011-ipad-samsung-galaxy-tab-stingray.htm

2. http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/01/05/5773225-motorola-xoom-android-tablet-may-be-first-ipad-killer

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAseudjhvD0&feature=player_embedded