When the Motorola Xoom was announced it was understood that at some point in time it would be getting access to Verizon’s 4G LTE network. How exactly was that going happen though has remained a mystery … until now. Documents that have been leaked to Droid Life suggest that customers who purchase a Xoom when it launches today will have to wait about 90 days to get their devices upgraded to become 4G LTE capable. You’ll have to ship your Xoom to Verizon, at no cost to you, and then wait up to 6 business days for them to crack open your beloved tablet, put in the necessary chips, and upgrade the software. You’ll be warned that you should backup your data before shipping the Xoom off for the upgrade.
Curiously the leaked document also says that the monthly data plan you’re subscribed to will not change in price, so it looks like 4G LTE is going to come at no additional cost, to tablets at least. Whether or not the same thing will apply to smartphones is something we’ve yet to see. Sprint used to charge a premium to get WiMAX data on their devices, but they’ve recently changed their minds and made it a part of everyone’s data plan.
The deeper question here is whether or not you should even get the Xoom. Many of the reviews that have slowly been trickling out to the net say that Android 3.0 Honeycomb for tablets feels like Android 1.0 for smartphones, meaning buggy, lots of inconsistencies, and an overall feeling that the product was rushed to market. Personally, the rule of 3 has always served me well. Wait until the third generation of any product category before cracking open your wallet. Forget about the Xoom successor, get the one after that, which we’re assuming is an early 2013 product.