Are you in the market for a new Android tablet? Do you want something bigger than the 7-inch display on the Nexus 7 and do you need to have wireless data connectivity? A pretty great deal has popped up on the Internet for the Motorola Xoom. It’s unlocked and ready to do the 3G thing with your GSM carrier of choice and, better yet, it’s selling for just a touch over half price!

You might remember my review of the Motorola Xoom Android tablet last year. It’s a seriously solid Android Honeycomb tablet which can be updated to ICS. This version comes with both Wi-Fi and 3G to go along with its 10.1-inch display and 32GB of internal storage. Power comes by way of a dual-core 1GHz Cortex-A9 OMAP 4 processor, 1GB DRAM, and integrated NVIDIA graphics.

When you consider that this 3G-enabled tablet originally listed for $699.99, the current sale price of $379.99 sounds pretty darn good. That’s $320 (47%) off the list price and it comes with free super saver shipping too. Having it unlocked certainly helps too, especially if you plan on doing any sort of international traveling.

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The Motorola Xoom just got a whole of a lot more appealing thanks to a new OTA update to ICS. This update replaces the stock Honeycomb OS and comes just a week after Asus started its rollout of ICS to the Transformer Prime.

For now, only American Wi-FI users are receiving the update, though international and 3G/4G models should still be in line for this upgrade shortly (though no official timeline has been revealed). This could mean that the beginning of a huge shift of upgrades to ICS could be heading our way for all Tegra 2 tablets, our at least we can hope. Of course its really up to each manufacturer whether or not they choose to update its devices or not. Of course, even if you Honeycomb tablet never gets official support, you can pretty much guarantee that an ICS custom ROM will eventually arrive.

[ source ]

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Recently, many major tablets like the Asus Transformer Prime, have begun receiving Android 4.0 updates. In response, Motorola is bringing Ice Cream Sandwich to Motorola Xoom tablets – at least for a few lucky ones out there.

As part of a pilot program, only a few thousand select Xoom Wi-Fi owners will receive the update as part of the initial and private test. The way that Motorola approached this update was somewhat on the sly, without mentioning ICS in its emails sent to select Xoom owners a few days earlier.

The wording was as follows:

Thanks for your patience as we’ve waited for this project to begin. Because we are dealing with a Google Experience Device (GED) we have less insight to timing than we would usually have. However, I’m happy to announce that we will start the update this evening. Because it was delayed a few days, we will also have additional time to test; we will let it run through the weekend.

For now, this means that only lucky users get a taste of Ice Cream Sandwich, but I suppose the positive side that if something does go wrong, they have less users affected. If everything goes off without any major hitches, Motorola will shortly begin deploying ICS to all Xoom users en masse, although a specific timeframe for this wider launch has yet to be announced. Have you got ICS lately?

[ Source ]

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Forbes’ contributor Todd Hixon follows TechCrunch analysis of the importance that perceived openness of the Android platform brings. The problem is very multi-faceted and complex, especially when taken in a perspective, and with inevitable comparison with closed-source platforms, such as Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Windows. Arguments of both analysts tend to agree that the openness of Android as its strong point is suddenly nowhere to be found when business and market considerations prevail. Sure, from a business standpoint, it really doesn’t matter what platform and development models are used in a given product: it’s an impact of a product itself that has an importance.

So stating an openness of an Android platform as a central point of Google’s Android ecosystem is no more than a marketing ploy from Google’s, and as such, it can be taken down any minute. This is exactly what happened when the Android Honeycomb source was closed several months ago and stayed so until recently. Did it help sales of Motorola XOOM running that very “closed” Honeycomb OS? I don’t think so. Will “open-sourced” Android Ice Cream Sandwich make it fare better? Hardly. Of course, there will be more powerful devices than the doomed XOOM, and they may sell much better with “open” Ice Cream Sandwich, but it’s clear that “openness” has nothing to do with the success of this or that product.

Both quoted analysts agree that Amazon with its Kindle Fire ignores every possible guideline of Google’s proclaimed  Android ecosystem: they build their own ecosystem that eliminates Google’s at every point and even block other competitive companies. Maybe in a lesser extent, but Samsung, HTC, Motorola, and many carriers do these “customizations” with an obvious target: re-directing revenue flow from Google’s coffers to their own.  There’s really nothing here that needs a winded, full-blown discussion and explanation. What the proclaimed openness of an Android ecosystem has to do with it? Nothing, it’s pure business.

So, next time you’ll hear the news that forthcoming Android Jelly Beans will be “source-closed” and put only on Google’s certified pieces of hardware, don’t be too surprised.

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From this first look at the tablet, you can tell that the design is quite different. For starters, you get more of a wedged-in corner kind of style, not unlike the design cue that we see in the recently launched Droid Razr. The back has an industrial design that almost reminds me of Getac’s rugged convertible tablet PCs.

While the Droid Xyboard ships with Honeycomb, it will be eligible for Ice Cream Sandwich at some point in the future.We’re being told that two sizes will be available too: 8.2-inch and 10.1-inch, both of which have the same 1280×800 resolution display, dual core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB RAM, Verizon 4G LTE, 5MP rear cam, and 1.3MP front cam.

The 16GB version of the 8.2-inch and 10.1-inch Droid Xyboard will retail for $430 and $530, respectively, with a two-year Verizon contract. Both can be bumped to 32GB models, while only the bigger tab will get the 64GB option.

The post Motorola Follows Xoom With Droid Xyboard Tablet With Verizon 4G LTE appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Tonight Motorola will be updating the firmware on their Xoom tablets, installing the “required enhancements” to make way for upcoming Flash 10.2. That doesn’t mean you Xoomers will have the promised Flash capabilities just yet, but the company has announced on its Facebook page that 10.2 will be available for download as of March 18.

Aside from preparing your slate for the Adobe update, the firmware will be taking care of a bug relating to Daylight Savings Time issues.

Adobe on the 18th plans to provide “smooth playback of high-def video content, uncompromised web browsing, an enhanced Flash gaming experience and more.”

If you’ve got 3G on your Xoom, you can expect the firmware over the air something this weekend.

[Motorola via Adobe]

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During CES in January and with MWC this month, we’ve seen a lot of new Android tablets. All of them, without fail, will mention that they have love for Flash 10.1, quick unlike a certain iProduct. Well, as it turns out, the championed Motorola Xoom isn’t so Flashy after all.

Well, at least not at launch. It has now been revealed that the Motorola Xoom tablet won’t be able to support Flash content when it first hits retailers soon. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have love for the Adobe standard at all; it just means that the support will come by way of a firmware update later in the Spring.

What does this really mean? It’s quite possible that Motorola is waiting around for Adobe to push out Flash 10.2 before it plays nice with the Xoom. This is because Flash 10.2 is being designed to be mobile-optimized, which would make more sense on tablet devices. So, for all the Moto-flavored Gingerbread fans in the audience, it’s a touch of good news dabbled with some bad.

[Giz via Verizon]

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Remember those early rumors that came out late last month about the Motorola XOOM price? Turns out those rumors were bang on. It has now been confirmed that the Honeycomb-powered tablet is indeed going to be priced at $799 unsubsidized through Verizon Wireless.

This comes by way of Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha. The $799 price includes 32GB of internal memory and 3G connectivity. That’ll get upgraded (they haven’t really announced how) at some point in the future to 4G. With that price point and connectivity option, the Xoom is $70 more than the iPad equivalent.

If you’re not as inclined to use wireless data, the Wi-Fi only version of the Motorola XOOM is being pegged at $600, which is right on par with the similarly-equipped iPad. That’s still a little pricey and there hasn’t been any indication about how much Verizon subsidy you might get with a data contract, but there you have it.

For my part, I hope that the tablet market soon takes the same turn as the e-reader market did. Remember when the Kindle was $300+? These days, you can get a suitable e-reader in the $100 range. Given this and the rapid advancements in technology, it might not be long before we get heavy hitting tablets from Moto, HTC, Samsung, and crew in the $300 range sans contract. *fingers crossed*

[via Reuters]

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The “confirmation” of the release date comes by way of the Best Buy, Grand Rapids location Facebook page. This isn’t really coming from Best Buy HQ or from Motorola, so you might want to take that date with a grain of salt. Then again, it’s well within the date range that we were expecting.

We’ve seen release dates “confirmed” by Best Buy in the past, only to discover that these dates are placeholders and then the product gets delayed ad infinium. Even so, I’m hopeful that we’ll finally get an official retail taste of Honeycomb soon enough.

In case you’re interested, the same Grand Rapids Best Buy has also confirmed release dates for the (Verizon?) iPhone 4, HTC Thunderbolt, and Samsung Presto, all of which are supposedly launching this month.

[Droid Life via Giz]

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On the outside the Xoom looks like everything we’ve come to expect from a tablet – 10.1” display with 1280×800 resolution, front (2MP) and back-side (5MP with flash) built-in cameras and weighing in at 1.6lbs. The back-side camera also captures video recording at 720p while the display playbacks video at an impressive 1080p.

However, it’s what’s on the inside of Xoom that made it the stand-out gadget this year. Before we get to the OS, it’s worth noting what’s powering it – the NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual core 1GHz processor. Including 32GB of user memory and 1GB DDR2 RAM the Xoom is built for speed and comfort. Motorola is also reporting battery life of 10 hours of dedicated video which really makes it a stand-out from many of the tablets we saw this year.

The Xoom will launch on Verizon 3G in Q1 of this year but will be upgradable to 4G LTE in Q2 which we think is a fantastic touch.

But what really makes Xoom this year’s stand-out is the OS – Google’s Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) software – that’s been specifically tailored to tablet hardware. In its third-version, Android seems to have shaken off its freshman and sophomore jitters and is finally being delivered with a unified aesthetic.  For a product that’s been hounded with complaints about its lack of a consistant UI, this is a marked improvement.

Previous versions of Android have relied on physical buttons embedded in the hardware to navigate menus within the OS but Honeycomb does away with that in this iteration as the main navigation buttons – Home, Back, and Menu – have become digitalized as part of the touchscreen. This is an important improvement for the OS as it makes it a more universal OS that gives hardware manufacturers more freedom as well.

One of the most oft-mentioned highlights is the new Gmail widget. It’s been a long time coming and is accompanied by new widgets for calendar, contacts, browser and a YouTube links.

“We took big risks and they paid off,” said Motorola Mobility chief software engineer Seang Chau. “We didn’t know if people would get it; but obviously they got it.”

It’s worth mentioning that Honeycomb is the first version of Android with barometer-support. This comes packed in along with the usual set of meters: accelerometer, magnetometer, ambient light sensor and gyroscope.

Foxconn and Catcher technology of Taiwan are also reportedly ramping up to supply parts for the Xoom. Details show that based upon orders placed with the vendors, Motorola plans manufacture between 700,000 and 1 million Xoom tablets before Q1 of 2011 is done.  Now that’s a huge feat which sounds plausible considering the attention the Xoom got at CES.  Google Android is taking tablets beyond the capabilities of Apple’s iPad.

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