
Ars reviews the Motorola Xoom - soundsop
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/reviews/2011/03/ars-reviews-the-motorola-xoom.ars
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code_duck
I checked out a Xoom in person at a Verizon store today - a kiosk in a mall,
so Xooms are definitely out there. It feels and looks like quality hardware.
They're solid feeling, and not too thick. The back isn't entirely flat, which
is odd compared to Apple products. I couldn't get a feel for the weight as it
was attached to that cell phone store cording.

I had a hard time figuring out how to get it to come on off of standby - there
are no buttons on the sides besides volume, no button on the top (a plastic
cover I thought might be a button, though) and unlike Android phones, no
visible software buttons. It turns out there is a little round button on the
back with a 'power' logo on it.

The home screen is neat looking. It shows an interesting mild 3-d cube effect
when you flip between panes. I'm not sure if I like how the buttons (in the
lower left) are only in software, and can change.

The browser seemed adequate to me. Pinching to zoom seemed a bit weird; one
time I ended up in some other application and I'm not really sure what
happened.

The Xoom also had Winamp installed (Winamp?) and the usual photo gallery,
applications menu, etc. There is a special 'windows' menu that shows you open
applications, which seemed convenient.

I think I would like a tablet a bit smaller than this, actually. I also
checked out a Galaxy Tab, and it was pretty snazzy. Of course, there's always
the iPad 2 coming out soon... while I _like_ my Android phone, I _love_ my
iPod Touch. not sure what it is, something intangible.

I'm not surprised to hear that Ars thinks it seems a bit unfinished. My
Motorola phone (a Droid 2) feels a bit unfinished, too. I had to return the
first one I had for some problems with the camera, and the slightly newer one
I have now is much more polished. Not sure why Motorola is in such a rush - it
hurts their reputation.

~~~
biot

        > The back isn't entirely flat, which is odd compared to Apple products.
    

The iPad's back isn't flat either: [http://www.gadgetvenue.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/01/apple-...](http://www.gadgetvenue.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/01/apple-ipad-side-profile-650x378.jpg) \-- at its
thickest point it's about twice as thick as the edge.

~~~
code_duck
I mean there's a bit of a protrusion - if I recall correctly, there's an oval
shaped area about the length of a finger sticking out about 1/2 cm. The power
button is on this area.

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Derbasti
14 hours of standby battery life? Is this normal for tablets with mobile data?

I feel that having to plug the tablet in every night would seriously limit m
usage of it--especially on travels. One thing I love about my (Wifi-) iPad is
that you can just pick it up instantly any time. If it would regularly run out
of juice while not being used this would hinder that use case a lot.

~~~
Synaesthesia
That was a typo. Motorola's specs say 14 days. I also wondered about that!

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jaskerr
_Although the Xoom performs well, its reliability leaves a lot to be desired.
During a week of very heavy use, I had between 5 and 8 incidents of
applications force-closing every day. The issue wasn't isolated to third-party
applications—Google's own software crashed pretty regularly._

[...]

 _Android in general is not especially robust, but the stability issues I
encountered on the Xoom seem worse than the relatively minor stability
problems I've had over the past few years with my various Android phones. I
imagine that the stability problems will be ironed out as Google improves the
platform._

And I would want to put up with this because ... ?

Waiting on promised fixes from Google, Motorola, or Verizon doesn't strike me
as worth the money.

(And, no, I'm not arguing in favor of Apple's iOS devices. In fact, I feel
poorly served by both Apple and Google - egregious policies on the one hand,
and poor workmanship and customer service on the other.)

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kayoone
This review again shows what Apple is really really good at: Polishing a
product and not promising stuff that doesnt work in the end.

~~~
natrius
Yeah, I love my white iPhone.

~~~
ugh
Any other, more substantial examples?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
The iPhone 3G update to iOS 4? I hear it's almost working acceptably now after
three minor updates.

~~~
ugh
First time I hear of that. No problems on my third generation iPod touch.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Some of the 3rd Generation touches had the same processor power as the 3GS,
some didn't and, as I recall, had the same issues as the 3G. I'm surprised you
didn't hear about this, it was very big news at the time since the original
update rendered many phones near to bricks.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=ios4+iphone+3g>

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daimyoyo
The fact is that the Xoom will fail because it can't compete with the iPad in
terms of cost or ecosystem. The iPad has nearly 70,000 apps designed for it.
The Xoom, not so much. Plus, it costs more than a 3G+WiFi iPad with the same
amount of storage and it requires a month of Verizon 3G service even if you
will never use it. The bottom line is that the iPad killer is out there. This
just isn't it.

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nl
_The Xoom comes with its own proprietary power adapter_

GODDAMMIT!!! Why?!?

~~~
nazgulnarsil
standard usb doesn't deliver enough power to charge large tablet batteries in
reasonable time. the nook color has a mini usb power port but the nook color
charger is extended with extra pins to charge at ~2000 mah.

~~~
nl
The obvious response is that it should offer dual USB ports for charging.

It would be pretty easy to design a connector with two (mini|micro)usb male
connectors on top of each other. Then you could trickle-charge to a single
port from a normal USB connector and charge properly from the double-
connector.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
I believe 2000mah charging would require four usb ports

------
ugh
So, how does loading music on an Android device usually work? Do you usually
have to drag over files to the mounted SD card? That seems awfully archaic to
me, I want my neatly organized music library to sync 1:1 without me having to
do anything. Also: Is internal and SD storage treated as one big blob of
storage or do I have to micromanage? Do I have to split my 40GB music library
in half and copy half of it to the internal memory and the other half to the
SD card or will whatever syncing applications are available manage that for
me?

~~~
wazoox
> _I want my neatly organized music library to sync 1:1 without me having to
> do anything._

I'm longing for an intelligent way to sync. I have just now 200 GB of mp3s
(and I'm not alone, nor exceptional, and I still have several hundreds CDs to
convert), so syncing 1:1 simply can't work at all until we have terabytes in
our portable devices.

~~~
ugh
Smart playlists work quite nicely and as a fallback dragging over files works
just as nicely inside applications with music libraries as in the filesystem
(maybe even nicer because those applications are tailored to browsing music,
also changes to the metadata sync automatically).

I’m luckily still under 64GB (about 39GB, I sync 256kb/s AAC files because I
can’t hear the difference) and it looks like my storage needs will grow slower
than available SSD storage.

At least I think that’s the case. My music library grew by about 8GB in the
last year but 2010 has been an exception. It’s usually around 3GB since about
2000 (I was twelve back then). If my music library continues to grow by 8GB I
have until 2013 to get something larger than 64GB. That should be doable.

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rbarooah
The irony; no support for loading music from Linux.

~~~
nlogn
And yet there is a functioning work-around that is extremely simple:
<https://supportforums.motorola.com/message/332363>

~~~
blinks
The forum manager (Matt) on that thread is being very cool about the whole
thing; bravo, Motorola.

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snitko
Can anyone please explain to me: why do all the photos of Xoom show the
landscape mode? Is it even possible to use it in a document mode?

