Alex-Davies
on - last edited on by
ElizabethS
On April 7th Motorola announced that the XOOM Android 3.0 tablet was available in Canada. Future Shop had jumped the gun a bit and started selling them the day before, so instead of waiting for a review unit to be sent to me I rushed out to buy it right away. I had hoped that I would be able to get some hands-on videos posted soon after. Sadly, due to Real Life™ this was not to be. Now a few weeks later the videos are ready.
The Motorola XOOM is a 10.1” Android tablet, and was the first model to run Google’s tablet specific version of their Mobile OS, Android 3.0, AKA Honeycomb. The initial version released in the US was a Verizon CDMA cellular model, and despite its many positives was deemed a little expensive, and incomplete. The first version to come to Canada is the Wi-Fi only model, which matches the equivalent 32GB Wi-Fi iPad 2, for $599.99.
Spec-for-spec the XOOM is comparable to the iPad 2, and better in some areas, with a higher resolution screen and arguably a better Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU. However it is the Honeycomb OS that is holding it back – but this is no fault of Motorola, or Google. Honeycomb is a great OS, fast and super smooth, and more intuitive to me than iOS – but just like when the iPad first came out there is a serious lack of tablet optimized applications in theAndroid market at the moment. Honeycomb is a brand new ecosystem, and the XOOM is the first piece of hardware running it, so this barren appscape is to be expected. Still, it will be frustrating for early adopters. Hopefully this will change when other Honeycomb tablets are released soon – models from Acer, Asus, LG and Samsung are all coming out over the next few months.
In my videos below I go over the impressive hardware, that features the usual impressive Motorola build quality, and look at some Honeycomb apps.
The Motorola XOOM is available now at Future Shop for $599.99 here.
Unboxing and hardware overview:
Software overview:
This article originally appeared on rgbFilter.com here, and has been edited.
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