My One Hour with the Motorola Xoom

Note: This is not an It's All Tech official review of the Motorola Xoom.

The Motorola Xoom is hyped as the first real competitor to the iPad, mainly because it is the first Android tablet with an OS that was made for tablets.  The Xoom runs Android 3.0, named Honeycomb, has a 10.1-inch touchscreen, front camera, rear camera with flash, stereo speakers and a dual core processor.  Comparable the iPad has an OS that was built for it, a slightly smaller screen and nothing else mentioned above.

I traveled to the nearest Best Buy on launch day of the Xoom, I knew the store was sold out but I also knew they would let me mess around with a display unit.  I was thinking about it on the drive there, knowing that the hardware on this thing would probably make my iPad feel jealous, probably make me just crave the iPad 2 more.

As for the hardware, it lived up to the hype like you wouldn't believe.  The first thing I noticed was the screen, it was larger and seemed slightly crisper.  The first thing I tried out was the cameras, a 2 megapixel on the front and 5 megapixel on the back.  I always questioned whether taking pictures with a tablet would be very easy or even practical.  I found out that it is easy and extremely useful.  This is a big one for the Xoom, especially with Google Talk. Now users can video chat with another tablet or computer, something the iPad currently lacks.

I mentioned the screen was great, so how about video?  Unfortunately the store didn't have any preloaded video so I had to settle for YouTube clips which can't really show off a good crisp screen.  One good thing came from this though, speakers that I could actually hear, speakers that make me want to watch a movie.  I quickly moved to some music that was already loaded on the Xoom, strange music that I have never heard before, and it sounded amazing compared to the iPad.

The Xoom comes with a 1GHz dual core processor, also something the iPad lacks, unfortunately there isn't really I way I could test out speeds.  Going through the Chrome internet browser was fast but about the same as an iPad.  It had a video editing app that I tried out but it was way too hard to figure out for the moment.  Going between screens seemed to lag quite a lot, something that was totally unexpected with a powerful processor.

As mentioned before the hardware is awesome, something I hope the iPad receives in a future update that shouldn't be too far away.  The Xoom runs Google's latest release of Android, Android 3.0 Honeycomb.  According to Google, Honeycomb was designed specifically for tablets, and the Xoom is the first to use it.  I'm going to admit that I wasn't all that impressed with Honeycomb, but I'll also admit I am an iOS user who doesn't want an Android tablet.

Honeycomb looks nice and looks like it has a lot of potential in the future but for right now it seemed to have a lot of bugs.  For one the Maps application, which comes preloaded, crashed on me at least five times and wouldn't let me see anything in street view.  I also had other preloaded apps crash, even the browser did once.  In addition it has an interesting UI, home, recent application (I'm not sure what this is actually called) and back icons that I assume must always be onscreen, not bad but different.  The recent application icon opens to a view of your recently used apps but only shows the five most recent, the iPad shows many more. If you have more Android experience that I do then you should be able to understand the UI better. The UI on the iPad is easy to learn for almost anybody, I don't see this on Honeycomb.

Touch on the iPad is amazing, rarely do I ever touch somewhere but the device thinks I touched something else.  While using the Chrome browser I noticed that I would touch a link but sometimes another link would open up.  I believe this to be some kind of mis-calibration and should be easily fixed.  This also could have something to do with the slight lag while going through screens.

The Xoom also lacks in apps that are designed specifically for tablets, but so did the iPad at launch.  This shouldn't be a problem for users in the long run.  I still wish I could have tried out some third-party apps but maybe next time.

Price, price, price.  The Xoom is priced at $799, something so ridiculous that even the salesman at Best Buy agreed.  Although a comparable iPad with 3G would be $729 an $800 price tag is a lot of money for a tablet.  Consider also that you must buy a month of Verizon data just to unlock WiFi capabilities, I'm not joking about this.  Also consider that the Xoom will be upgradeable to 4G LTE for free in the future, which could make up for that $70 price difference. Verizon will subsidize the Xoom to $599 with a two-year contract, but seriously nobody should do that.

Can you believe how much I got out of just one hour, it didn't seem like an hour at all, the battery seemed to die right on time.  One employee joked to me that there is a time limit for playing with this thing, or maybe he wasn't joking. Even though the battery died, an employee told me it had been going through heavy use for 9.5 hours, which is impressive. In the end I see that $800 is too much for the Xoom, that to me is the deal breaker, in addition to an OS that still needs work.  Also consider the fact the iPad 2 should be just around the corner, I am going to wait and so should everyone that is in the market for a tablet. However, if you are an Android person that doesn't want an iPad then seriously consider the Xoom. It has the best hardware on the market for a tablet, the Xoom is truly the first real competitor to the iPad.