Motorola Debuts Android Honeycomb Tablet at CES

By Mashable

We’ve heard about it; we’ve seen glimpses of it. Today, Motorola has finally revealed Xoom, its first Android-powered tablet.

And yes, it runs on Honeycomb, the fabled, forked version of Android intended for tablets.

At today’s Motorola press conference at CES, CEO Sanjay Jha introduced the tablet. It features a 1080p screen resolution, front and rear facing cameras, and an accelerometer.

Here are more specs from Motorola:

Motorola Xoom… allows consumers to experience HD content right on the device, supports 1080p HD video and HDMI output to display content on larger HD screens, and plays video and other rich web content seamlessly with Adobe Flash Player.

Motorola Xoom features a front-facing, 2-megapixel camera for video chats over Wi-Fi or 3G/4G LTE, as well as a rear-facing, 5-megapixel camera that captures video in 720p HD.

It delivers console-like gaming performance on its 1280×800 display, and features a built-in gyroscope, barometer, e-compass, accelerometer and adaptive lighting for new types of applications. It also features Google Maps 5.0 with 3D interaction and delivers access to over 3 million Google eBooks and thousands of apps from Android Market.

The OS and device support multitasking and real-time widgets. Jha said Xoom will be “the most competitive tablet on the market.”

Expect to see 3G and Wi-Fi-enabled Xoom units be the end of Q1 2011. Units with 4G connectivity should be available sometime in Q2.

Xoom will launch on Verizon.

We learned late last summer that Honeycomb would be a tablets-only OS. While other manufacturers were rolling out tablets with 1.X and 2.X OSes, Motorola held out for the 3.0 fork.

As one Google exec stated, Froyo (Android 2.2) and earlier versions are simply “not optimized for use on tablets… If you want Android Market on that platform [a tablet running Froyo], the apps just wouldn’t run, it is just not designed for that form factor.”

We’re hoping the wait for Google’s tablet-approved OS will be worthwhile. Early last month, we saw Google showing off the Motorola prototype running Honeycomb — not too long before Motorola started dropping hints about tablet launches for CES.

We’ll let you know more about Xoom, including pricing and availability, as details become available. Stay tuned for more CES coverage on Mashable