News broke earlier that the Motorola Xoom will be the first tablet to be powered by the new Android Honeycomb operating system. While this in itself is more than enough to warrant a closer look at the machine it has been a big draw at the CES 2011 for more reasons than this.
It is fair to say that this is the first tablet which Google is really putting its weight behind in a bid to shift the iPad from the summit of the tablet world. Whether they can do this or not depends upon a lot of factors but it is certainly going to be an interesting tussle.
Let’s have a look at the stats behind the new Motorola Xoom then. The screen is 10 inches in size (10.1 inches according to the official Motorola blurb). It is driven by a dual core processor. It is a tiny bit thinner than an iPad, with the difference being all of 0.5mm. The design is black with a rubber backing. There are two cameras on board, one at the front which you would use for videoconferencing and a rear one for taking pictures.
The battery life has been quoted at 10 hours for video use, which isn’t too far from the iPad level. The display has an impressive 1280 x 800 resolution and a 16:10 ratio. It will run on 3G with Motorola stating that it can be upgraded to 4G, although we weren’t given any details on how or when.
One big difference you will note between this new tablet and the iPad and is that is sits round the opposite way because the docking port is located on the bottom of it. This means that it sits in landscape rather than portrait.
Being the first tablet to use Android Honeycomb will certainly give the Motorola Xoom a head start, but will it be enough for them to beat off the increasing competition we expect to see this year?
