Motorola Xoom 2 Hinted At: Android Ice Cream Sandwich, 2048×1536 Resolution, and Tegra 3 Quad-Core Processors
The Motorola Xoom released months ago, which boasted lots of high hopes and features, fell flat to Motorola’s hopes for their iPad killer. However now Motorola and Verizon are hinting at a Xoom 2, which is rumored to have much more features like the newest Android OS called Ice Cream Sandwich and a high-resolution display of 2048×1536 pixels. In addition to the Xoom 2, the Xoom 1 will be upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich, and will be the first tablet to upgrade to Android 4.0. The Xoom 2, shown in the Verizon ad below, is also rumored to boast a Tegra 3 Quad-core processor, which will create blazing fast speeds on the Xoom. The Xoom 2 is also suppose to have a 4:3 aspect ratio, which looks much better on tablets than the 16:9 ratio which the Xoom has. The Xoom 2 might arrive quite soon, as the Verizon ad probably hints at the new Xoom. The tablet shown in the ad seems to have Xoom-ish features, like a rugged body and a ridged pattern on the back. However, it seems to have smoother edges and a rubber top part. All that is left to do is to wait and see when Motorola will make their move: now, soon, or never?
Source: businessinsider.com, youtube.com
About icearmor
As with many others I have spent a great amount of time researching about IPAD2 WIFI vs. XOOM WIFI.
I ended up choosing xoom, and I am impressed with this product. Here I would like to share my thought process as well as impression. So anyone in similar situations as I was may be able to use this for guidance.
First of all, I own tablet pc x 2 with most recent one purchased back in November 2010. I also own itouch. Never owned android product.
Quick background for the reason I needed/wanted new tablet
- Longer battery life: My tablet pc only lasted 5 hours
- Lighter tablet: My tablet pc weighted 2.5 lbs
- Bigger screen: My tablet pc had less than 9 inch screen, which was great for comic reading but not so great for work related document reading.
Work related
- To watch multiple work related video series
- To read ebooks. Some of which are not straight off kindle nor nook market, but rather converted books from other file formats such as chm or saved web pages. Some of these files are huge in size (up to 200MB) and contain multiple images, tables, and applied CSS.
- To view Microsoft Office files. Some of these files are relatively large in size(over 10MB) with multiple images, textbox, and smartart. These need to be accessible even when there is no internet connection.
Personal use
- To read digital comics
- To watch streaming videos.
Here are are my opinion about xoom wifi version so far.
Pros
1. Watching videos
- Works very well without any lag or stuttering. Screen resolution is a bit higher than IPAD2, but doubt it is significant enough to be noticible.
- One great thing about xoom is microSD support (not available yet). As I need to have multiple DVD sets with each being 20+GB, rather than deleting/reloading videos here and there, I can simply have dedicated microSD for each DVD sets. Currently, the highest storage capacity of microSD goes upto 32GB. If I had gone to IPAD2 route, I was going to go buy 64GB for maximum storage capacity, which may have been sufficient by itself but 32GB alone will not.
2. Ebook reading
- My ebooks are not typical. They are in epub file formats. Even on PC, only couple applications can render these files correctly. On itune market, using itouch I could not find any application that can render my ebooks except Stanza, which came very close for one ebook, but clushed on the other and ibook came very close with the other book, but did not show any images on the one opened with Stanza. So together was able to provide close to perfect solution. *Supposedly, ibook does not render images if they are within the table.
On my xoom, I tried pretty much all the epub reader on android market. None could render my files except one application, which actually rendered both books with complete original style and layout. Minor issues are still there in this application such as bug with internal hyperlink. But this is the best epub reader I have tried so far among pc, itune, and android market. Just in case anyone is wondering, it is called StarBook.
*Reason I said best and included PC here is two applications on PC that renderes my files correctly actually takes longer to open the epub files for some reason.
3. Reading Digital Comic
- Not to say much here. Works perfectly. Certainly, should work as greatly on ipad2.
4. Watch streaming video
- Flash 10 has been installed. All the streaming video sites that I visit works just as on PC. Definitely better than PS3 web browser. However, I have read somewhere that playing Flash based games on xoom have significant lags. As I don’t play Flash based game, this was not an issue for me. But Flash for Android Table OS is still beta version, so considering it is better I am sure many issue will resolve with final version.
5. Customizability
- Very impressive. In fact, this is the one main reason that I suddenly became fan of android os. It takes some learning and definitely not as Apple customer friendly interface. But once you know how to customize this, you can basically make it into exactly the way you want. Widget is awesome feature just like windows 7 widget, but seem more appropriate in tablet setting. For instance, CNN widget updates highlight news every hour on my home screen without me clicking on the application.
6. USB Connectivity
- This can be both pros and cons. But for me this is under pros. As I just simply like to be able to drag and drop files, and be able to create my own folder organization.
7. GPS
- Surprised to see built in GPS. Have not really played with, but apparently there is a way to have voice direction navigator using google map.
Cons:
1. Weight
- Main negative for xoom here. According to the technical specifications, in comparison to Ipad 2 xoom is 130g heavier. It indeed does have bigger monitor, but for me, I’d rather have lighter tablet. Despite overall weight is around 730g and significantly lighter than my asus 8 inch windows 7 based tablet, it is still noticible weight for me. Especially holding on one hand or holding up in bed. If this is the major concern, I recommend one to wait until June when Samsung Android based tablet that supposedly be lighter (by really small margin) than ipad 2 is released.
2. View microsoft office files (primarily word document)
- So far, I have not found any perfect word viwer application yet. None of them can render textbox (maybe preminum version of Document2Go). None can recognize SmartArt. Skydrive shows everything, but not crisp due to lack of SilverLight plugin support for android; besides, Skydrive will not work without internet.
3. Slight learning curve
- Never owned android product before. There is definitely much more steeper learning curve with android os than the ipad os. I didn’t mind this or in fact, I enjoyed finding out new things. But I cannot recommend android os product to my parents as they can hardly surf internet on pc. On the other hand, I am sure they will not have any issue learning ipad2.
So for those who cannot decide, which one to get like I was. Just list what your main use will be and compare each. I am sure either will work out great. But one thing I can say is that Android Tablet OS is real stuff. I thought it could be buggy, lots of lags and so on. But works as smoothly as you can imagine.
Wonderful addition to the article. This reader would like to thank the author for this insightful commentary.