Review: Motorola Xoom Good, But No iPad KillerReview: Motorola Xoom Good, But No iPad Killer

Motorola Xoom Teardown: Inside The New Android Tablet

The Motorola Xoom -- the first device to run the tablet-optimized Android 3.0 Honeycomb platform -- is a solid entry into the tablet market, though the experience of using it is a bit uneven. The device itself is easy to use and control, but Honeycomb itself is not quite fully baked.

I have spent nearly two weeks using the Xoom. How does it stack up as a mobile computing device?

Hardware

Motorola has crafted a fine piece of hardware to encase the Xoom and all its capabilities. The Xoom's dimensions run 9.8 x 6.6 x 0.5 inches, and it weighs in at 1.6 pounds. It is a perfect size to fit into a briefcase, backpack, or satchel, though only the biggest purses could contain it. The plastic materials are sturdy and well put together, though the back surface attracts a lot of fingerprints. It is dense, and feels strong.

Because the Xoom has an approximate 16:9 aspect ratio for its 10.1-inch screen, it is almost always held in the landscape orientation when in use and many of the secondary controls reflect this. Along the bottom edge of the Xoom, Motorola has tucked in microUSB, mini-HDMI, and charging ports. These all lock into a number of accessories that Motorola is offering for the Xoom. There is a 3.5mm headset jack on top for headphones, as well as a non-functioning SIM card slot (it will be activated once the Xoom is upgraded to LTE). Volume controls are on the left side, and the buttons are a bit too small. The HD video camera, dual-LED flash, and stereo speakers are on the back surface of the Xoom.

The one fairly odd design choice made by Motorola is the placement of the power/screen lock button. It is on the back of the Xoom, and falls under your left index finger when you grip the sides. I would much prefer this button to be on the front of the device (somewhere my thumb could reach it). That positioning led to accidental screen shutdowns when I was in the middle of some activities. It's not the end of the world, but something I'd prefer to see changed if/when the Xoom is revised.

The Xoom's 10.1-inch display holds 1280 x 800 pixels, giving it a pixel density of 150 pixels per inch. It is perfectly capable of playing HD movies, and works well for browsing, playing games, and -- gasp! -- getting some work done. The one place I'd give it negative marks is the display's brightness. No matter how far up I cranked the brightness controls, it hardly seemed to impact the visibility of the Xoom's display. It comes off as a bit dull, and it was almost impossible to use outdoors. It was great for watching movies in a dark room, though.

In all, the hardware works as it should, and, aside from the odd screen lock key, the tablet itself doesn't get in the way of how it is used.

Honeycomb User Interface

Though Android 3.0 Honeycomb is an evolutionary upgrade to the Android smartphone system, it's hardly recognizable as such. The entire home screen experience has been altered, as have many of the menus, controls, and settings.

Motorola Xoom Teardown: Inside The New Android Tablet

Honeycomb presents five home screens, which can be accessed by swiping to the left or right. All the themes and fonts have been adjusted, giving the interface a wholly new look and feel to it. The home screens can be populated with whatever applications, shortcuts, or widgets you like, just as you can on Android smartphones. Widgets are clearly Honeycomb's main attraction. With the added screen real estate, developers have a lot more breathing room and can expand the size -- and functionality -- of their widgets. Google, for example, has crafted Gmail and YouTube widgets for the home screen. The Gmail widget allows users to preview their inbox without opening the full application. The YouTube widget similarly allows users to sift through the top videos of the day without opening the full YouTube application. Developers can do a lot with their widgets.

If you want to do more than interact with the apps, shortcuts, and widgets on the home screen, all the finer controls have been pushed to the outer edges of the display. In the top left corner, Google has placed dedicated search tools (including voice search). Applications on the device are accessed via tools in the upper right corner. Controls here also allow users to fine-tune the appearance of the home screens and widgets. The bottom right corner hosts all the settings for various functions such as the wireless radios, the display settings, privacy, accounts, and so on. Notifications pop-up in this spot, too. Last, the bottom left corner controls on-screen navigation for jumping back a screen, to the home screen, or calling up the multitasking bar.

It takes only a few minutes to get used to how these all function. The flexibility offered by Honeycomb should not be underestimated. Though it isn't as seamless or intuitive as other platforms, it offers a lot and will only improve over time.

Performance

The Xoom did well in most performance tests I put it through. The Xoom has a dual-core 1GHz processor for motivation. You can tell that the device is no slouch. While using it, I noticed no slow downs, no lag, and most applications opened quickly. The only applications where I noticed stuttering were ones that were network-dependent. Even though the system software supports multiple active widgets at once time, all the animations and screen transfers were smooth and nearly instantaneous.

Battery life, for example, was consistently at about 7.5 hours per charge with Wi-Fi and 3G radios active and the screen set to 50% brightness. The one activity that really kills the battery is using the Xoom as a mobile hotspot for other devices. Doing this drained a full battery in just over 5.0 hours. Even so, with more than 7 hours of battery life under regular usage, it's enough to get through a full workday.

All the Xoom's wireless radios worked great. Connected to my home network, I was able to get download speeds well in excess of 25 Mbps and upload speeds in excess of 10 Mbps via Wi-Fi. Switching to Verizon's CDMA-based 3G network, speeds slow down considerably. Downloads max out at about 1.4 Mbps and uploads peak at 800 Kbps. Keep in mind, that's 3G, not 4G. The Xoom isn't slated to get the LTE 4G upgrade until later this year. There's no telling how that will affect battery life.

Motorola Xoom Teardown: Inside The New Android Tablet

The Xoom also supports Bluetooth, which I was able to use to pair and connect it with several different Bluetooth keyboards, as well as stereo Bluetooth headphones and so on. I will fault the Xoom for only supporting Bluetooth 2.1+EDR. Adding Bluetooth 3.0+HS (which enables extremely fast wireless data transfers) is a glaring omission in my opinion, but most people won't miss it.

The Xoom's 5-megapixel camera -- which doubles as an HD video camera -- does not produce spectacular results. In fact, it often doesn't produce mediocre results. Video turns out better than still images do, but even then the tablet form factor is not really optimized for capturing video or taking pictures. It works well enough for video chat sessions and sharing what's nearby, but don't expect it to replace your dedicated video camera or point-and-shoot camera. On the plus side, the new user interface that Google created for the camera application is a joy to use. Gone are all the submenus for adjusting the camera. Everything has been brought to the desktop in a way that makes sense.

Productivity

OK, so the Xoom handles most of the basics with aplomb, but does it let you get any work done?

The Xoom comes with solid Google Services integration. That means if you use Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and so on, you're going to be well taken care of. There are two email clients on board -- the dedicated Gmail client and a generic email client for every other type of email. These two applications proffer more feature parity than their smartphone companions (meaning the generic email experience doesn't lag the Gmail experience too much). Email shows up instantly, and the client behaves much like the iPad's email client does. There are several different panes that help you navigate between your different folders and emails. You can star and archive Gmail just as on the desktop. The generic email client can be used to set up any type of Web mail or Exchange email accounts for corporate users.

Using the browser, I was able to access my Google Docs. Thankfully, the Xoom let me not only open my Docs and read them, but edit them as well. I really like the way Google Calendar behaves on the Xoom. It meshes perfectly with the online version and supports nearly all the same features. The same applies to your Picasa web albums and other Google services.

One area the Xoom fails miserably -- at least for now -- is support for third-party apps. At the time of this writing, there were only several dozen applications in the Android Market that are compatible with Honeycomb. That's not good, and I am in fact surprised that Google didn't ensure that more would be available at launch. Of the apps that are available to Honeycomb, nearly all are games, utilities, or news applications. There are no enterprise apps to speak of yet.

Motorola Xoom Teardown: Inside The New Android Tablet

The other big disappointment is the browser. Don't get me wrong, it's leagues better than what's available on Android smartphones, but it still manages to make some critical blunders. For one, Web sites don't know how to react properly to the Xoom. Web sites mostly think it is a smartphone, so they serve up the mobile version rather than the desktop version. This gets old really, really fast. One of the main selling points of Honeycomb -- the ability to play Flash content -- isn't available yet. Adobe is still working to finalize Flash Player Mobile 10.2 for Honeycomb. Until it does, the Xoom doesn't support Flash. Perhaps the browser's best feature is the way it supports real tabs. You can open a large number of Web sites and easily jump to any of them via the tab bar at the top of the browser. This makes a lot more sense than having to jump out to a secondary screen to see what Web sites are open and available.

What does this mean for enterprise productivity? Well, unless your organization uses Google Apps, the Xoom will be limited in what it can do until developers catch up with Android 3.0 Honeycomb. It manages the basics -- i.e. email, contacts, calendar management -- but beyond that, it lacks the support of thousands of apps.

Fun

Tablets aren't just for work, though. There are plenty of ways to use the Xoom to entertain oneself.

The initial crop of games available to the Xoom are actually pretty decent, and include titles such as Fruit Ninja, Spectral Souls, Gun Bros, AirAttack HD, and others. The selection will only improve over time.

Google has revamped the music player application as well as the video player application. Both are much more visually immersive and have fun-to-use graphics to interact with. I was able to use the Xoom as a mini entertainment center on a short trip I took. The speakers do a fine job for movie watching when you're in a small room, and you always have the option to plug in headphones for less intrusive entertainment.

Bottom Line

Android 3.0 Honeycomb feels like a 0.9 beta. It's almost done, but not quite. It needs to be rounded off at the edges more, and get some features -- such as the browser and Flash -- working as they should. It also needs better support for the enterprise in the form of apps and management tools that IT can put to use.

Even though the platform itself doesn't come across as 100% complete, it's easy to see how powerful it will be as it evolves over time. The flexibility of the home screens alone will appeal to many. They have far more range for customization than any other tablet platform that comes to mind. As more applications -- and specifically, more widgets -- are built to support Honeycomb and its home screens, its capabilities and usefulness will only grow.

As for the Xoom, it's a solid piece of tablet kit, no doubt, and a good first device for Android 3.0 Honeycomb. Given that it is Motorola's first effort, I expect much better things to come in the not-too-distant future.

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