Thursday, January 6, 2011

Motorola Hopes To Tackle Apple With Xoom Tablet

By InformationWeek

The Xoom is Motorola's entry into the tablet space, and it goes on sale by the end of the first quarter of this year from Verizon Wireless. The Xoom stands apart from Samsung's Galaxy Tab and the Apple iPad in interesting ways. Let's take a look.
First, the Xoom has a 10.1-inch display, which is larger than the Tab's 7-incher and iPad's 9.7-incher. It has a widescreen aspect ratio, with 1200 x 800 pixels, and it is powered by dual-core 1GHz processors. It will ship with a 3G radio for wireless broadband to start, but can be upgraded to 4G Long Term Evolution through a hardware modem swap later this year. (Motorola said this requires a technician and can't be done by end users.)
Other hardware specs include support for 1080p HD video playback and Adobe's Flash Player. For gaming, it has a gyroscope, accelerometer, e-compass and a barometer. The main camera shoots at 5 megapixels and can capture 720p HD video. The Xoom has a user-facing 2 megapixel camera for video chats. The iPad has no cameras.
In the few moments I was able to spend with the Xoom, I can say that it looks good -- if a little plain -- and the weight is about 1.5 pounds (700g). The surfaces and controls felt good. No one, however, really got a true understanding of how the user interface works.

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