Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi - Zooming Past the Competition

A Shot at Stardom

Apple still retains its top position in the growing tablet market despite the barrage of Android tablets for sometime now. They failed to make a dent in iPad sales due to the nature of the OS - it wasn't optimized for using on tablets. Not many apps and widgets could work in Froyo, the Android OS (version 2.2) that most tablets shipped with last year. To top it off, the user experience was barely satisfactory and paled in comparison with Apple's iOS. Google realized it was time to return to the drawing board, and redesigned an Android OS to suit Tablet usage - codenamed Honeycomb.

The Motorola Xoom claims the honor for being the first tablet to ship with the Honeycomb OS (Android 3.0). When it was launched during the , the Motorola Xoom received much fanfare as it marked Google Android's first salvo against Apple's popular iPad. Looking at the Motorola Xoom, it is easy to see why it is being touted as the "iPad killer". It is probably the best Android tablet (by specifications) in the market right now.

However, the Motorola Xoom isn't the first Honeycomb tablet to arrive locally and we actually have reviewed an as our first hands-on with an Android 3.0 equipped device. It is equivalent in size with a 10.1-inch screen, and it even runs on the same NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor. It should make for an interesting comparison in the later part of our article, but for now, we'll set the stage by going through what the Xoom has to offer:-

When you hold the Motorola Xoom in your hands, the first impression you get is its hefty weight. Tipping the scales at 708g, the Motorola Xoom (Wi-Fi version) is significantly heavier than the by 100g. If you hold the Xoom for an extended period of time, you may feel the strain on your hands. It is therefore, easier and more comfortable to hold the Xoom with both hands. The Xoom feels solidly built, with smooth rounded edges giving you an assuring grip of the device

The large 10.1-inch display dominates the front of the tablet. However, it is a bit too glossy for our liking. Not only does the glossy surface make the Xoom a fingerprint magnet, it is so reflective that it interferes with whatever you are doing on the tablet – be it reading or watching movies. There is no physical buttons around the bezel of the screen. Unlike the iPad’s home button at the bottom of the screen, Motorola opts for touch controls at the four corners of the home screen.

While you can use the Xoom in any orientation you like, it is designed to work optimally in landscape mode. A two-megapixel webcam sits at the center above the screen for video chatting and the likes.

At the back, the tablet is has a matt surface, which is less likely to attract fingerprints. You will also find a five-megapixel camera and a dual LED flash. The stereo speakers flank either side of the back, but there's no danger of your hands covering them as they are located towards the top of the device.

If you have difficulty finding the Power button on the Xoom, you are not alone. We were surprised to find the button located just beside the right stereo speaker at the rear. Although the position seems weird, we gradually understood the rationale. It makes ergonomic sense when holding the Xoom in landscape mode as you can easily turn on or off the device with your fingers that would be conveniently located near the vicinity of the power button.

You will find the volume control buttons on the top left corner. The good thing is they're not flushed to the surface, hence making it easy to access.

While the tablet has a microSD slot, its functionality is disabled at the moment. Motorola states that a future update will enable it. In the meantime, you have to settle with its built-in 32GB of flash storage. Beside the microSD bay is a SIM card slot. Our review model of the Motorola Xoom is a Wi-Fi only edition, hence rendering the SIM card slot useless.

Located at the bottom are the microUSB port, HDMI connector and charging port. It is unusual that the microUSB port can only be used for data transfer. We prefer the convenience of charging and data transfer through the same port as seen in other tablets and smartphones.

Hitting the Sweet Spot for Tablets with HoneyComb

As mentioned earlier, the main highlight of the Motorola Xoom is the Honeycomb OS, specially for tablet usage by Google. Previous Android tablets run the same OS as Android smartphones, which made these tablets feel and look like "oversized" phones. With the launch of Honeycomb for tablets, we see a revamped user interface complete with tablet-friendly widgets and apps that are optimized for the larger screens.

When we power on the Motorola Xoom, it greets us with a lock screen that shows the time and date. Swiping the lock icon any direction out of the circle reveals the home screen. Existing Android users will be surprised at how different the interface looks from their smart phones or tablets which have earlier Android versions.

Another notable feature of Honeycomb is the App Launcher. It can either be activated by the + icon on the top right corner of the screen or a long press on the screen. It allows you to preview the five home screen panels and a list of customization options such as widgets, app shortcuts and wallpapers.

Honeycomb comes with five home screen panels, which gives you plenty of space to place your apps and widgets. There are also new widgets designed specifically for tablets . This is a key advantage over the iPads, as you can customize the screens any way you want them to be. For example, the Bookmarks widget is an interactive tool that allows you to browse your favorite websites by tapping on the thumbnails of websites. The thumbnails contain screenshots of the websites. Google, Picasa and Facebook are default bookmarks.

 You will be glad to see 3D-like thumbnails views of video clips in the  YouTube app.  Search results will be shown in grids.

The virtual keyboard has also undergoes a face-lift. The keys are much bigger and better spaced out, giving your fingers more room to type on. This makes the typing experience more comfortable and faster. It also has a distinct yet cool addition on the layout - an emoticon key, which comes in handy during instant messaging with your peers.

The Internet browser in Honeycomb is refined to make better use of the bigger screen estate. It bears some resemblance to the Chrome browser. It supports multi-tab browsing, which you can open several tabs simultaneously within the same window. Moreover, you can open an incognito tab for private browsing. This means that there will be no record of your browsing and download history in that mode.

Despite the vast improvements seen from the overhaul of the Android OS, there is still room for improvement. The number of Android apps available specifically for Honeycomb is quite miserable compared to the iPads, which have access to over 65,000 apps. This may put off potential buyers as the functionality of the Xoom will be limited to the limited apps available at the moment. However, given the rate of Android's growth, we are confident that there will be more apps being created for Android tablets in the coming months.

Android also needs to standardize the icon sizes of the apps. Such irregularities, when compared to the uniformity in iOS, do not put Honeycomb in such a good light.

The multitasking feature is innovative but certainly lagging behind iOS. Currently, it only shows the five most recently opened applications and there is no way to close the apps from there. Compared to the multitasking on iPads, it is troublesome to dig deep into the Settings menu to close the apps. We also hope to see the multitasking feature manage more running apps.

Testing the beast within

The Motorola Xoom is among the first salvo of tablets to come equipped with a 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor. It also has a whopping 1GB RAM to ensure things run smoothly on the tablet. These specs, are pretty much in-line with the which we reviewed recently and the and it will be interesting to see how the Motorola fairs in our testing. In this section, we will put the Xoom through performance benchmarks against these other Honeycomb tablets and the Apple iPad 2. Here is a summary of what each benchmark tests for in tablets:

• Quadrant evaluates the CPU, memory, I/O and 3D graphics performance. This is an Android OS based test.
• Smartbench 2011 is a multi-core friendly benchmark application that includes both the Productivity and Games Indexes for a more complete gauge of the overall performance of Android devices.
• SunSpider JavaScript benchmark measures the browsing performance of the tablet.

Based on the Quadrant benchmark, the Motorola Xoom is pretty much on par with its Android peers, with minimal differences among them. In the Smartbench category, the Xoom's performance is also somewhat consistent with the rest of the Android slates, since all three are equipped with the same processor and OS.

Since the Android tablets are comparable to each other in terms of performance, we threw in Apple's iPad 2 to stiffen up competition in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark. This will give you a general idea of how Honeycomb's tablets fare against the iPad 2 in terms of web browser performance.

From the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark scores, all four tablets are almost equals as well. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that regardless of which platform you choose, the web browsing experience will be about the same. As with all our review articles, do take note that the benchmark scores are obtained with stock firmwares and hence, not a conclusive account of their performances during day-to-day usage conditions in reality.

An Excellent Entertainment Device On-the-Go

There is only one word to describe the feeling of reading and watching videos on the Motorola Xoom - gorgeous. With a generous 10.1-inch display of 1280 x 800 pixels resolution, colors seem to pop out and text appears crisp. However, the only major drawback of the screen is its super reflective coating. We certainly do not like to see our reflection or the surroundings in the display, which seriously irritates us quite a bit. You may want to consider putting a matte screen protector to minimize this issue. A pair of stereo speakers at the back provides decent audio experience, which is a nice complement when watching video clips or blasting music.

The Motorola Xoom comes equipped with a 5-megapixel auto-focus rear camera which is capable of 720p HD video recording. It also has a 2-megapixel front camera which can be used for taking self portraits or indulge in video chats. We put the Xoom's rear camera through the color and resolution tests and see how it fares.

Last but not least, we put the Motorola Xoom through our battery test to determine how long it can last. The battery test involves running a 720p video with the screen brightness and volume at 100%. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections are turned on as well with regular data streaming through email and Twitter. We pit the Xoom against the Acer Iconia Tab A500, Apple's iPad and iPad 2.

As you can see, the Android tablets are no match for Apple's iPads in the battery life test and our Portability Index profiling. Could it be due to the Android tablets having slightly larger screens that draw more power? Maybe, but the difference in screen sizes is relatively insignificant yet the disparity is so wide. As such, we feel it's probably a limitation of the vendors not doing enough optimization of their their device to bring down the power draw. Apple however with just a single device and OS, can fully pour its resources to customize their hardware and OS to the limits and thus keep their edge ahead of the competition for battery life and portability aspects.

Nevertheless, we should give credit to the Motorola Xoom for performing better than the Acer A500 despite having almost similar specifications. Putting the iPads' statistics aside, the Xoom's battery life is actually quite acceptable. What we've shown is a depiction of a fairly stressful usage scenario of playing videos non-stop on the device, but more casual usage could easily see the Xoom last the entire day or more before it requires charge. As advised in all our reviews, the actual battery life depends on how you use the device.

The Race has Just Begun

To be frank, we enjoyed ourselves during our time reviewing the Motorola Xoom. As the world's first Honeycomb tablet, it definitely lives up to the hype and it delivered a smoother experience than on the Acer Iconia Tab A500 with its own user interface layer. We certainly welcome the new Android interface with its tablet-friendly apps and widgets. There is little cause to doubt that Android is catching up fast with iOS. The Honeycomb OS is more polished, allowing for a smoother and more fluid touch screen experience. Pinch-to-zoom is flawless on the large screen, which gives us so much more room to work with. Motorola has consistently produced mobile devices with superior build quality and the Xoom is no exception. While it may be a tad heavy, the Xoom compensates with its solid build and smooth finish.

Nonetheless, there are areas that Motorola can improve on. We would have liked to see better camera performance and battery life to boost the Xoom's standing as a true multimedia tablet. To be fair, we do not expect tablets to replace our digital cameras and neither do not want the Xoom to get any heavier due to a higher capacity battery. We also hope Google and Motorola can collaborate further to refine power management aspects of both software and hardware, which  while it's already decent, there's potential for it to be better. Another area which the Motorola Xoom lost points is its inability to charge the device via the microUSB port. Other smartphones and tablets can do this, yet Motorola overlooks this functional aspect and requires users to have yet another charging cable.

Despite some niggling aspects, the Motorola Xoom in many ways, seems to be one of the best Android tablets in the market at the moment. At the recommended retail price of S$888, the Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi costs significantly more than Apple's iPad 2 32GB Wi-Fi (S$798) and the Acer Iconia Tab A500 (S$799). This puts the Xoom slightly above the price bracket of its competitors despite them having similar build quality and features. Other manufacturers are also releasing tablets models of comparable specifications at competitive pricings. There is a need for Motorola, and other manufacturers adopting the Android OS, to differentiate themselves.

The rate of Android development also casts doubts over the shelf life of the Honeycomb tablets. Even before other Honeycomb tablets hit our shores, Google has announced the next Android OS (codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich) for tablets and smartphones. It is scheduled for release in Q4 of 2011. For now, we can only look forward to the Android 3.1 update to see what else it can bring to the the tablet scene. Until then, the rest of competition needs some luck in matching up to the high benchmarks set by the Motorola Xoom.

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.

A Shot at Stardom

Apple still retains its top position in the growing tablet market despite the barrage of Android tablets for sometime now. They failed to make a dent in iPad sales due to the nature of the OS - it wasn't optimized for using on tablets. Not many apps and widgets could work in Froyo, the Android OS (version 2.2) that most tablets shipped with last year. To top it off, the user experience was barely satisfactory and paled in comparison with Apple's iOS. Google realized it was time to return to the drawing board, and redesigned an Android OS to suit Tablet usage - codenamed Honeycomb.

The Motorola Xoom claims the honor for being the first tablet to ship with the Honeycomb OS (Android 3.0). When it was launched during the , the Motorola Xoom received much fanfare as it marked Google Android's first salvo against Apple's popular iPad. Looking at the Motorola Xoom, it is easy to see why it is being touted as the "iPad killer". It is probably the best Android tablet (by specifications) in the market right now.

However, the Motorola Xoom isn't the first Honeycomb tablet to arrive locally and we actually have reviewed an as our first hands-on with an Android 3.0 equipped device. It is equivalent in size with a 10.1-inch screen, and it even runs on the same NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor. It should make for an interesting comparison in the later part of our article, but for now, we'll set the stage by going through what the Xoom has to offer:-

When you hold the Motorola Xoom in your hands, the first impression you get is its hefty weight. Tipping the scales at 708g, the Motorola Xoom (Wi-Fi version) is significantly heavier than the by 100g. If you hold the Xoom for an extended period of time, you may feel the strain on your hands. It is therefore, easier and more comfortable to hold the Xoom with both hands. The Xoom feels solidly built, with smooth rounded edges giving you an assuring grip of the device

The large 10.1-inch display dominates the front of the tablet. However, it is a bit too glossy for our liking. Not only does the glossy surface make the Xoom a fingerprint magnet, it is so reflective that it interferes with whatever you are doing on the tablet – be it reading or watching movies. There is no physical buttons around the bezel of the screen. Unlike the iPad’s home button at the bottom of the screen, Motorola opts for touch controls at the four corners of the home screen.

While you can use the Xoom in any orientation you like, it is designed to work optimally in landscape mode. A two-megapixel webcam sits at the center above the screen for video chatting and the likes.

At the back, the tablet is has a matt surface, which is less likely to attract fingerprints. You will also find a five-megapixel camera and a dual LED flash. The stereo speakers flank either side of the back, but there's no danger of your hands covering them as they are located towards the top of the device.

If you have difficulty finding the Power button on the Xoom, you are not alone. We were surprised to find the button located just beside the right stereo speaker at the rear. Although the position seems weird, we gradually understood the rationale. It makes ergonomic sense when holding the Xoom in landscape mode as you can easily turn on or off the device with your fingers that would be conveniently located near the vicinity of the power button.

You will find the volume control buttons on the top left corner. The good thing is they're not flushed to the surface, hence making it easy to access.

While the tablet has a microSD slot, its functionality is disabled at the moment. Motorola states that a future update will enable it. In the meantime, you have to settle with its built-in 32GB of flash storage. Beside the microSD bay is a SIM card slot. Our review model of the Motorola Xoom is a Wi-Fi only edition, hence rendering the SIM card slot useless.

Located at the bottom are the microUSB port, HDMI connector and charging port. It is unusual that the microUSB port can only be used for data transfer. We prefer the convenience of charging and data transfer through the same port as seen in other tablets and smartphones.

Hitting the Sweet Spot for Tablets with HoneyComb

As mentioned earlier, the main highlight of the Motorola Xoom is the Honeycomb OS, specially for tablet usage by Google. Previous Android tablets run the same OS as Android smartphones, which made these tablets feel and look like "oversized" phones. With the launch of Honeycomb for tablets, we see a revamped user interface complete with tablet-friendly widgets and apps that are optimized for the larger screens.

When we power on the Motorola Xoom, it greets us with a lock screen that shows the time and date. Swiping the lock icon any direction out of the circle reveals the home screen. Existing Android users will be surprised at how different the interface looks from their smart phones or tablets which have earlier Android versions.

Another notable feature of Honeycomb is the App Launcher. It can either be activated by the + icon on the top right corner of the screen or a long press on the screen. It allows you to preview the five home screen panels and a list of customization options such as widgets, app shortcuts and wallpapers.

Honeycomb comes with five home screen panels, which gives you plenty of space to place your apps and widgets. There are also new widgets designed specifically for tablets . This is a key advantage over the iPads, as you can customize the screens any way you want them to be. For example, the Bookmarks widget is an interactive tool that allows you to browse your favorite websites by tapping on the thumbnails of websites. The thumbnails contain screenshots of the websites. Google, Picasa and Facebook are default bookmarks.

 You will be glad to see 3D-like thumbnails views of video clips in the  YouTube app.  Search results will be shown in grids.

The virtual keyboard has also undergoes a face-lift. The keys are much bigger and better spaced out, giving your fingers more room to type on. This makes the typing experience more comfortable and faster. It also has a distinct yet cool addition on the layout - an emoticon key, which comes in handy during instant messaging with your peers.

The Internet browser in Honeycomb is refined to make better use of the bigger screen estate. It bears some resemblance to the Chrome browser. It supports multi-tab browsing, which you can open several tabs simultaneously within the same window. Moreover, you can open an incognito tab for private browsing. This means that there will be no record of your browsing and download history in that mode.

Despite the vast improvements seen from the overhaul of the Android OS, there is still room for improvement. The number of Android apps available specifically for Honeycomb is quite miserable compared to the iPads, which have access to over 65,000 apps. This may put off potential buyers as the functionality of the Xoom will be limited to the limited apps available at the moment. However, given the rate of Android's growth, we are confident that there will be more apps being created for Android tablets in the coming months.

Android also needs to standardize the icon sizes of the apps. Such irregularities, when compared to the uniformity in iOS, do not put Honeycomb in such a good light.

The multitasking feature is innovative but certainly lagging behind iOS. Currently, it only shows the five most recently opened applications and there is no way to close the apps from there. Compared to the multitasking on iPads, it is troublesome to dig deep into the Settings menu to close the apps. We also hope to see the multitasking feature manage more running apps.

Testing the beast within

The Motorola Xoom is among the first salvo of tablets to come equipped with a 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor. It also has a whopping 1GB RAM to ensure things run smoothly on the tablet. These specs, are pretty much in-line with the which we reviewed recently and the and it will be interesting to see how the Motorola fairs in our testing. In this section, we will put the Xoom through performance benchmarks against these other Honeycomb tablets and the Apple iPad 2. Here is a summary of what each benchmark tests for in tablets:

• Quadrant evaluates the CPU, memory, I/O and 3D graphics performance. This is an Android OS based test.
• Smartbench 2011 is a multi-core friendly benchmark application that includes both the Productivity and Games Indexes for a more complete gauge of the overall performance of Android devices.
• SunSpider JavaScript benchmark measures the browsing performance of the tablet.

Based on the Quadrant benchmark, the Motorola Xoom is pretty much on par with its Android peers, with minimal differences among them. In the Smartbench category, the Xoom's performance is also somewhat consistent with the rest of the Android slates, since all three are equipped with the same processor and OS.

Since the Android tablets are comparable to each other in terms of performance, we threw in Apple's iPad 2 to stiffen up competition in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark. This will give you a general idea of how Honeycomb's tablets fare against the iPad 2 in terms of web browser performance.

From the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark scores, all four tablets are almost equals as well. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that regardless of which platform you choose, the web browsing experience will be about the same. As with all our review articles, do take note that the benchmark scores are obtained with stock firmwares and hence, not a conclusive account of their performances during day-to-day usage conditions in reality.

An Excellent Entertainment Device On-the-Go

There is only one word to describe the feeling of reading and watching videos on the Motorola Xoom - gorgeous. With a generous 10.1-inch display of 1280 x 800 pixels resolution, colors seem to pop out and text appears crisp. However, the only major drawback of the screen is its super reflective coating. We certainly do not like to see our reflection or the surroundings in the display, which seriously irritates us quite a bit. You may want to consider putting a matte screen protector to minimize this issue. A pair of stereo speakers at the back provides decent audio experience, which is a nice complement when watching video clips or blasting music.

The Motorola Xoom comes equipped with a 5-megapixel auto-focus rear camera which is capable of 720p HD video recording. It also has a 2-megapixel front camera which can be used for taking self portraits or indulge in video chats. We put the Xoom's rear camera through the color and resolution tests and see how it fares.

Last but not least, we put the Motorola Xoom through our battery test to determine how long it can last. The battery test involves running a 720p video with the screen brightness and volume at 100%. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections are turned on as well with regular data streaming through email and Twitter. We pit the Xoom against the Acer Iconia Tab A500, Apple's iPad and iPad 2.

As you can see, the Android tablets are no match for Apple's iPads in the battery life test and our Portability Index profiling. Could it be due to the Android tablets having slightly larger screens that draw more power? Maybe, but the difference in screen sizes is relatively insignificant yet the disparity is so wide. As such, we feel it's probably a limitation of the vendors not doing enough optimization of their their device to bring down the power draw. Apple however with just a single device and OS, can fully pour its resources to customize their hardware and OS to the limits and thus keep their edge ahead of the competition for battery life and portability aspects.

Nevertheless, we should give credit to the Motorola Xoom for performing better than the Acer A500 despite having almost similar specifications. Putting the iPads' statistics aside, the Xoom's battery life is actually quite acceptable. What we've shown is a depiction of a fairly stressful usage scenario of playing videos non-stop on the device, but more casual usage could easily see the Xoom last the entire day or more before it requires charge. As advised in all our reviews, the actual battery life depends on how you use the device.

The Race has Just Begun

To be frank, we enjoyed ourselves during our time reviewing the Motorola Xoom. As the world's first Honeycomb tablet, it definitely lives up to the hype and it delivered a smoother experience than on the Acer Iconia Tab A500 with its own user interface layer. We certainly welcome the new Android interface with its tablet-friendly apps and widgets. There is little cause to doubt that Android is catching up fast with iOS. The Honeycomb OS is more polished, allowing for a smoother and more fluid touch screen experience. Pinch-to-zoom is flawless on the large screen, which gives us so much more room to work with. Motorola has consistently produced mobile devices with superior build quality and the Xoom is no exception. While it may be a tad heavy, the Xoom compensates with its solid build and smooth finish.

Nonetheless, there are areas that Motorola can improve on. We would have liked to see better camera performance and battery life to boost the Xoom's standing as a true multimedia tablet. To be fair, we do not expect tablets to replace our digital cameras and neither do not want the Xoom to get any heavier due to a higher capacity battery. We also hope Google and Motorola can collaborate further to refine power management aspects of both software and hardware, which  while it's already decent, there's potential for it to be better. Another area which the Motorola Xoom lost points is its inability to charge the device via the microUSB port. Other smartphones and tablets can do this, yet Motorola overlooks this functional aspect and requires users to have yet another charging cable.

Despite some niggling aspects, the Motorola Xoom in many ways, seems to be one of the best Android tablets in the market at the moment. At the recommended retail price of S$888, the Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi costs significantly more than Apple's iPad 2 32GB Wi-Fi (S$798) and the Acer Iconia Tab A500 (S$799). This puts the Xoom slightly above the price bracket of its competitors despite them having similar build quality and features. Other manufacturers are also releasing tablets models of comparable specifications at competitive pricings. There is a need for Motorola, and other manufacturers adopting the Android OS, to differentiate themselves.

The rate of Android development also casts doubts over the shelf life of the Honeycomb tablets. Even before other Honeycomb tablets hit our shores, Google has announced the next Android OS (codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich) for tablets and smartphones. It is scheduled for release in Q4 of 2011. For now, we can only look forward to the Android 3.1 update to see what else it can bring to the the tablet scene. Until then, the rest of competition needs some luck in matching up to the high benchmarks set by the Motorola Xoom.

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.