It’s not a phone which is oversized with tablet-like stuff built on it. Motorola Xoom is enriched by Android 3.0 which is grounded up for large screens. Hardware is very powerful including Nvdia’s Dual Core Tegra Processor and Face Time Camera (front and back).
Cost in US: $599 and with two years contract cost $799 with 3G.
Xoom has no flash Support till now. It will be available in upgradation.
Design
Motorola Xoom is streamlined, tough but not so stylish. The presence of powereful Android 3.0 eradicated the traditional buttons - Home. Back, Search, or Menu hard keys - from the tablet. It’s all there in the Android 3.0.
Power Button is right at the back of the tablet with two powerful stereo speakers and a 5 Mp Cam attached to a dual LED Flash.
Inspite of being small in size as compare to the competitor iPad, it weighs more(1.6 pounds to that of 1.5 of iPad).
Xoom size-9.8*6.6*0.5 inches vs iPad Size-9.6*7.5*0.5.
While holding Xoom in landscape mode, the two volume buttons lie on the left side. SIM Card Slot and a headphone jack lies on the top whereas a small proprietary power jack, a mini HDMI port, and a micro USB on the bottom.
Display and Audio Features
The cynosure in Xoom is its 10.1 inch display resolution 1280*800 pixels whichis sharper than iPad’s 9.7 inch display resolution 1024*768 That shows the efficiency of reading without scrolling down.
Xoom’ s screen is much more stylish with its bluish cast as compared to iPad;s Yellow tones. Xoom’s panel pick up finger prints faster.
Android 3.0 (HoneyComb) and Interface
There are five home screens press and hold on any of the below seen five home screens and there will be some stylish animations that zooms out all the five screens which allows user to drag and drop the app shorcuts and new interactive widgets like YouTube, Gmail in whichever screen you want. How comfortable it would be to go through your inbox without opening it and we could even flip and watch videos in Youtube using 3D User Interface.
Search bar is on the top left of the homescreen which is a dual pane having query on the left and showing results on the right. Shortcut for activating Voice Actions is also there on the top left of the home.
Apps button and + button is there on the top right of the screen.It adds widgets and apps to the homescreen.
The left bottom always displays Home, Back and Recent app buttons.Holding on Recent app button will display the recent five apps thumbnails opened recently. If it is in a Portrait mode the count goes to six.
There is a notification area on the right side of the System Bar which helps you to see all the notifications from music (if playing a track) to mail alerts and from Facebook to Twitter. Each and every notification has its own icon. You can see all the notifications just by touching the Displayed time. In place of Menu Button Google added Action Bar on the top right of the screen. Whenever you are within an app, Action Bar displays various options.
Virtual Keyboard
Typing in portrait mode is more comfortable as you don’t have to stretch your arm too much to reach the keyboard on the screen. Copy and Paste feature in Gmail and Browser is wonderful. Just hold the text to select it and various option such as Copy, Select All and Share will be displayed. This option is only for browser and Gmail.
Web Browser
Google has powered the Android 3.0 to part its browser the functionality to open a new tab for opening a new site while you have already opened a site By pressing ‘+’ button we can open a new tab. There is no browser setting to switch the browser to Desktop mode. First the mobile sites will be loaded and you have to scroll down to switch to traditional desktop mode. Bookmark menu power the surfing by showing 15 bookmarked sites at once. Those who want to use their track can open a tab in Incognito mode which leaves no cookies and also don’t appear into your history. Flash is only the feature which is not supported but it is going to come in next few week. Speed is also fairly well than iPad over AT&T’s networks.
Email
Android 3.0 separates Gmail and Email. For eg you get an Gmail inbox widget but you will not get any other email widget. But every email has a similar look and feel. It will display messages at the left and contents at the right.
Video Chat
FaceTime Camera helps in video chat.You can also see which user is having Camera by seeing the icon on the right and suppose if camera plugin is not installed and voice chat is enabled , you will see the symbol of microphone.
Audio and Video quality is high and synchronized.
By looking over some of the distinctive features of Motorola Xoom I will say that it is a fair competitor of iPad 2. Its better to use and Android is giving a tough competition to Apple.
Cheers!!!
Ethan
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