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As expected, the Motorola XOOM went live and is now available from Verizon Wireless. The XOOM will be available for $599 with a two-year customer agreement or for $799 without a contract. Reviews on the XOOM hit the wire last night and most paint a favorable picture of the Honeycomb tablet. The biggest detractors are its price (slightly higher than the comparable 3G iPad model which is priced at $729) and its Honeycomb OS which is a nice upgrade from earlier versions of Android, but lacks the volume of applications available for the iPad and is no as polished as iOS.
For hardware fans, the XOOM sports the following specs that place at the top of the tablet market for the immediate future:
- 10.1-inch HD (1280×800) capacitive multi-touch display, 1 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor, 1 GB RAM
- 32GB of internal storage
- 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with dual-LED flash and 720p HD video capture
- 2-megapixel front-facing camera for video calls
- HDMI-output
- 4G connectivity (3G only at launch with 4G upgrade in Q2 2011)
- WiFi (B/G/N)
- GPS (with compass)
- Gyroscope, accelerometer, Barometer, Ambient light sensor
- 3.5mm headphone jack
- Stereo speakers
- Bluetooth
- Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS
If you are on the fence about this tablet, check out our full review which includes a detailed look at this Android tablet. The XOOM will be available in Verizon stores and Best Buy nationwide.
About The Author
Kelly Hodgkins
Kelly spent the last four years covering mobile technology at places like BGR, Gizmodo and The Unofficial Apple Weblog. Before writing, she spent a few years working with and teaching others how to use Adobe Flash and Macromedia Director. Even earlier than that, she spent several years as a Ph.D student in Microbiology. When she's not writing, she can be found fishing the lakes and hiking the mountains of Western Maine with her husband and tribe of children. You can follow her on Twitter @kellyhodgkins.
