Motorola Xoom With Android 3.0 Is Out!, Is it Impressive or Not? (Review)

Before releasing the Xoom, it became one of the most widely talked Tablets within the past few weeks or days perhaps. The reason is actually pretty simple behind that statement. It was the first Tablet to ship with Google's latest Android mobile OS called the Honeycomb + it has a dual core processor (with the Nvidia Tegra2 GPU).

Few hours ago after it was released!.. I was browsing the web and came up with a pcworld review on the Motorola Xoom. And below are some of the briefed information as I went reading through it. 

The design

Solid design (on the physical side) with decent weights + really good looking slimmer characteristics with a rubberized finish on the top, black metal at the bottom... and it seems that Motorola has designed it for the landscape mode especially.

A 2MP front facing camera, SIM tray (with embedded microSD slot), power and volume control at the outer body which can be accessed with ease. It has two stereo speakers to the left and to the right and the USB (micro) + HDMI output slots are located at the bottom.

The button locations are perfectly made if you want to mount it on a dock which can be purchased separately. Anyway, below are some of its main hardware details...

*. Dual core processor (with each core running at 1Ghz).

*. 1GB of RAM.

*. 32GB of internal storage.

*. 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 4G supported.

*. 10.1 inch screen with 1280x800 resolution (150dpi) at 16:10 aspect ratio.

*. Has a battery which fully charges 3.5 hours!.

*. 1.6 pounds (including the battery).

Now still the microSD slot memory upgrade it not supported. But don't worry it's not about physical support only a hardware or software update WILL do it. And Motorola will bring it pretty soon.

The unimpressive display :( ... well let's say somewhat

From high resolution pictures to viewing "things" within the OS seems to be having some quality issues (grid lines, etc). Although this may have nothing to do with the screen which is pretty good actually (150 dpi) so let's hope this is a bug in the Honeycomb. The quality issues is apparently can be seen with the videos as well.

File Transfers

It is fast!. In comparison with the Apple's iPad the Xoom is fast. From transferring things from and to USB or PC, etc the wait time is minimized dramatically.

Software

The OS seems OK but can't blame the Honeycomb since it is kinda a totally different version than its predecessors... apps that are designed for latter versions seems to have problems (some of them) too such as software crashes, etc. But the ones that are on board seems to be working just fine.

The Xoom supports few different both video and audio files such as H263/4, mp4 but the previously supported .wmv is not working for some reason. The battery according to Motorola is designed to run up to 10 hours of HD video playback. Go to here for a list of files supported by honeycomb (currently).

Both the 2MP front and the 5MP back cameras are working quite well (including LED flash, etc).

Conclusion

Well the apparent problem actually comes with the screen and its image issue. So hopefully this could be due to a bug in the OS or the GPU drivers which can be fixed via software updates. Unless it is a bug in the actual screen which is beyond repair (unless you swap it ) ...

But when considering 4G support and a powerful processor and RAM the Motorola Xoom android tablet is a pretty decent product. But ain't at the level of "positive" impressions that the Apple iPad delivered at the time it came around. Go to this endgadget xoom review article for more pictures and info.