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Motorola will upgrade your Xoom to 4G LTE -- even if you've rooted it
Happy news for Android tinkerers everywhere -- Motorola has officially confirmed it will attempt to perform its 4G upgrade on all Verizon Wireless-riding Xoom tablets it receives from users, whether they've been rooted, repainted, or accessorized with fluffy dice. Naturally, the company can't guarantee successful software updates on devices that have had their OS tweaked, so it asks users to be kind and rewind to the original firmware state. For those unwilling to stretch that far back, Moto will still give it a shot and says that it'll install the 4G LTE modem at a minimum. What a refreshingly open-minded attitude. Now if Moto could give us an open-minded bootloader on its phones as well, we'd be all set.
WiFi-only Motorola Xoom appears at Sam's Club, bearing $539 price?
You might have seen Motorola's WiFi-only Xoom popping up at European e-tailers, but it's reportedly flying the red, white and blue today, having materialized at Sam's Club in the good ol' USA. Droid-Life stumbled upon several snapshots of these Xoom Wi-Fi vouchers, with a $539 price tag hanging above their heads -- plenty cheaper than a cellular Xoom, and also slightly more affordable than a similarly specced iPad 2. Of course, Sam's Club deals in wholesale merchandise, and even should this price be accurate the tablet may not be widely available at the same rate, so don't count out $599 as the Xoom Wi-Fi's MSRP. Meanwhile, let us know if you manage to find and ring one up at the register, eh? [Thanks, Michael]
Motorola Xoom 3G arrives in UK for £600, gets enigmatic listing on Amazon.de for €700
Yesterday we saw the WiFi-only Xoom get its UK pricing straightened out at £500 via PC World, and today Carphone Warehouse is putting up pre-order availability of the 3G-equipped version at a nice round hundie more. The £600 Xoom 3G is listed as "in stock" now, but deliveries will likely take until the first week of April to get going, assuming Moto is delivering both SKUs of its Android 3.0 tablet at the same time. We've also come across an Amazon.de pre-order for the Xoom, asking for €700, but alas there's no hint as to whether it includes 3G connectivity or not -- no hint other than the price, that is. [Thanks, Yosef]
iPad 2 vs. Motorola Xoom vs. HP TouchPad vs. BlackBerry PlayBook: the tale of the tape
You might recall we ran this comparison about a month back when HP's TouchPad was announced, but now we're back with a full set of 2011 devices as Apple's brand new iPad 2 has joined the fray. There's no need for excessive introductions, really, just leap past the break to get swalloped up by an avalanche of next-generation tablet specs.
Motorola Xoom returns to PC World UK, this time at £500, promises April 9th delivery
Maybe PC World is trying to sneak the bad news in under the cover of the iPad 2 launch, but it's returned Motorola's Xoom tablet to its pre-order systems with a far less pleasing price than before: £500. It was £450 yesterday, but our suspicions were raised by the impossibility of actually pre-ordering one, and sure enough, now that you're able to sign yourself up to be among the first in Europe to own a Xoom, it'll cost you a 50 note more. Launch is scheduled for the first week of April, we're told, and PC World has a tentative April 9th delivery date. Yours, if you want it, at the source link below.
Google gifts Xoom tablets to game devs at GDC 2011
Google's notoriously generous at developer events, tossing out free devices like candy on Halloween, but here at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco it's letting them flow like wine. Each attendee at Google's Web Developer Day yesterday got a free Cr-48 laptop, and today the company dished out even greater prizes -- either a free Motorola Xoom tablet or a Nexus S smartphone to every soul listening to some exceedingly well-attended technical sessions on Android. That's certainly one way to attract game developers to your platform.
Motorola prices WiFi-only Xoom at £500 in the UK (update: €700 in Germany with 3G)
Finally Motorola gives us a chance to say something positive about its pricing of the 10.1-inch, Tegra 2-powered Xoom tablet. UK electronics retailer PC World has just put up its Xoom pre-order page, which will surprise many waking Brits with an extremely reasonable £450 ($730) asking price. That's £60 less than the direct competitor 32GB WiFi-only iPad -- the Xoom only has one storage option of 32GB and the model listed here comes without 3G -- and perhaps more importantly, is only £10 more than the 16GB version of Apple's tablet. It's common knowledge that to take on the iPad empire you'll have to at the very least match its price, and Moto is doing even better than that in the UK. There's only one worrying sign, we haven't been able to place a Xoom into our shopping basket yet, as the "Pre-order today" button seems to be malfunctioning, but we're guessing that's a temporary glitch that will be fixed without the price shooting up skywards. Update: T-Mobile Germany has also revealed its Xoom pricing, this time for the 3G model: €699.95. Distribution will begin at the end of April and T-Mo will have a three-month exclusive on the tablet in its native land. The pricing positions the Xoom a mere 95 Euro cents above the 32GB-equipped iPad WiFi + 3G, meaning that your choice will truly come down to preference and not economics. See T-Mobile's full press release after the break. Update 2: The PC World price and pre-order have been pulled. Gulp. Let's hope they comes back unchanged. Update 3: The page is back, this time with an April 9th delivery date, but the price has Xoomed up to £500. Oh no. [Thanks, John]
Motorola Xoom and Thunderbolt-equipped MacBook Pro get torn down
The Xoom's big attraction may be the ethereal Honeycomb that oozes within it, but it's still a gadget made of metal, silicon and plastic, so we're as keen as anyone to see what its insides look like. iFixit has dutifully performed the task of tearing one down to its constituent components and found an Atmel touchscreen controller capable of picking up 15 inputs at a time, a Qualcomm MDM6600 chip capable of 14.4Mbps HSPA+ speeds, some Toshiba NAND flash memory, and of course, NVIDIA's beloved Tegra 2 dual-core SOC. The conclusion reached was that the Xoom is relatively easy to repair, though you should be aware there are no less than 57 screws holding the thing together, so free up a nice long afternoon if you intend to disassemble one yourself. Aside from Moto's flagship tablet, iFixit has also gotten to grips with Apple's latest MacBook Pro, the one that can do Thunderbolt-fast transfers with as yet nonexistent peripherals, though discoveries there were predictably few and far between. The wireless card now has four antennas instead of three and there are some changes made to the cooling systems, but the real reason you'll want to see this is the quad-core Sandy Bridge CPU lurking within -- it's as big and imposing as the performance it promises to deliver.
Motorola Xoom now available for purchase straight from Verizon, no data activation required (updated)
Oh yes, the world's first Android Honeycomb tablet really is here now. As Verizon announced earlier, you can snag a Motorola Xoom for $599.99 with a two-year contract, or splash out $799.99 for just the LTE-ready device. Alas, the WiFi-only version is nowhere to be seen just yet, but maybe some will show up in the stores later if not tomorrow, so hold on to your personal hotspot devices and keep believing. Either way, in case you're still indecisive over this 10-inch goodness, maybe our review will help. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] Update: Verizon's been in touch to inform us of a policy change: customers who purchase the off-contract Xoom will now no longer need to be on a month to month plan. That said, we still see "Month to Month" as a compulsory option at the time of updating this post.
Motorola Xoom will get LTE in 'approximately 90 days,' requires one week for hardware upgrade (updated)
When will the Motorola Xoom, ahem, justify its price point with a dose of Verizon's speedy LTE? According to an allegedly leaked Verizon document at Droid-Life, it seems we'll see it by the end of May. You can read the rest for yourself immediately above, but if you have an aversion to JPEG images we'll also spell out the salient points here: the upgrade will reportedly be completely free, including shipping; both hardware and software tweaks will be carried out by Motorola; and the whole process will take up to six business days. If these facts are all correct (and we don't honestly doubt a one), you should see them mirrored at our more coverage link in the days to come. Update: The official Xoom LTE upgrade site is now live confirming that the process will take six business days to complete after shipping it off to Verizon in a FedEx box, free of charge. Unfortunately, VZW won't say exactly when the upgrade will be available, going only so far as to say "shortly after launch."
Motorola Xoom review
As we put rubber to road on our Motorola Xoom review, it's important to note that it was only a matter of time before the Android army delivered a proper iPad competitor. Moto's partnership with Google (and use of the 3.0 version of its mobile operating system, Honeycomb), has made that assumed inevitability a very serious reality. There can be little question that the Xoom is certainly a contender for the hearts and minds of potential tablet buyers in the market. Besides boasting that fancy new software (a completely redesigned experience masterminded by the man behind webOS, Matias Duarte), the Xoom is equipped with formidable hardware. The 1GHz, NVIDIA Tegra 2-based slate boasts a sizable 1GB of DDR2 RAM, 32GB of internal storage, a 10.1-inch, 1280 x 800 capacitive display, 3G connectivity (Verizon on our review unit), along with front and rear facing cameras, HD video capability, and loads of wireless options. Not only is the Xoom clearly competitive (and frankly, more stacked) than most of its competition, Motorola has attempted to futureproof the device by offering a free hardware upgrade down the road which will give the tablet access to Big Red's 4G LTE network. Of course, all this power comes with a cost... literally. With a list price off contract of $799, the Xoom is quite a pricey piece of technology to own. Still, with all that's packed inside -- and more importantly with what Google has done on the software side -- the Xoom could represent the next stage of tablet evolution. Is it time to take the plunge? Read on for our definitive answer in the full Engadget review! %Gallery-117477%
Motorola hands out gold Xooms to Oscar hosts, nominees
Motorola may only be offering the Xoom in basic black to the general public, but it's cooked up something a little extra special for the Oscars this Sunday. It will be handing out these limited edition gold Xooms -- complete with a custom leather envelope case -- to the hosts and the nominees in the Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Director categories. Guess stars aren't just like us after all.
Adobe promises Flash Player 10.2 for Honeycomb tablets 'in a few weeks,' Xoom gets namechecked
We found out yesterday that Motorola's Xoom would be shipping sans Flash support on Verizon Wireless, and while Big Red claimed that an update would be doled out this spring, the folks at Adobe are pointing to a far more specific time frame. In a new post over at the Flash Platform Blog, Adobe has confirmed that "Flash Player 10.2 [will be] pre-installed on some tablets and as an OTA download on others within a few weeks of Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) devices becoming available, the first of which is expected to be the Motorola Xoom." We're guessing that the company's going public with a statement like this to fend off fears that the Xoom may be waiting an eternity for Flash, in essence removing a bit of fear from hesitant early adopters. Either way, it's excellent news for those eying a Honeycomb tablet of any flavor, and we're going to take the liberty of taking "a few weeks" to mean "a fortnight." Cool, Adobe?
Verizon announces Xoom pricing: $600 on contract, $20 per month for 1GB data
Verizon just filled in the rest of the Xoom pricing story -- in addition to the $800 off-contract version that's already up for pre-order at Best Buy, you'll be able to sign a two-year data contract and pick up a Xoom for $600 upfront. That's a decent savings, although you'll be getting just 1GB of 3G data for $20/month, so it's not exactly a stunning deal in the end: a Xoom and 24GB of data over two years for $1,080. On the plus side, Verizon has confirmed that the Xoom LTE upgrade will in fact be free when it goes live in Q2, which is terrific news -- but we're waiting to see what the LTE data plans look like before we get too excited. PR after the break. Update: We're hearing from Verizon reps that the Xoom will also be able to take advantage of the carrier's larger data plans as well -- $35 a month for 3GB, $50 a month for 5GB, and $80 a month for 10GB. Still no word on LTE pricing, though. [Thanks, droiddoesall]
Engadget Podcast 233 - 02.21.2011
Our program today is XXXXXL heavy in a lot of different ways, and most of those ways lie under a big robotic green umbrella. Get it? It was a weather-related Android allusion; please forgive us. It's the Engadget Podcast, wedged firmly between the past and the future, unsure of what to feel about either one, but trying to exist really completely in the now.Hosts: Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel, Paul Miller Producer: Trent WolbeMusic: Love Will Tear Us Apart00:05:30 - Samsung Galaxy S II official: dual-core 1GHz CPU, 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus, coming this month (hands-on with video)00:05:50 - HTC Incredible S, Desire S, and Wildfire S video hands-on00:06:00 - Samsung Galaxy S WiFi 5.0 preview (video)00:16:22 - Qualcomm promises Netflix streaming support on 'future Android devices' with Snapdragon00:16:43 - Android-powered LG Revolution caught streaming Netflix at MWC (video)00:23:02 - Next version of Android will combine Gingerbread and Honeycomb, arrive on a six-month cycle00:23:58 - The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play (update: video and full spec sheet!)00:24:25 - Sony Ericsson touts Xperia Play multiplayer gaming, promises 50 titles at launch00:24:40 - Sony Ericsson Xperia Play available in March, on Verizon in 'early spring'00:35:26 - LG Optimus 3D hands-on00:44:48 - HTC's Facebook-worshipping phones headed to AT&T later this year00:46:20 - HTC Salsa and Chacha bring the dedicated Facebook button to Android (update: eyes-on)00:51:30 - Motorola Xoom vs. Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 vs. LG G-Slate -- battle of the Tegra 2 Honeycomb tablets00:52:08 - Motorola Xoom price official: $799 unsubsidized on Verizon, $600 for WiFi-only00:53:00 - Motorola's Sanjay Jha on Xoom: 'Our ability to deliver 4G justifies the $799 price point'00:59:10 - HTC launches 1.5GHz, 7-inch Android 2.4 Flyer into the tablet wars (update: hands-on video!)00:59:48 - HTC Flyer tablet hits Amazon.de for 669 euros00:59:55 - The stylus isn't dead: more pen-based tablets and apps coming this year01:05:01 - Exclusive: Sony 'S1' PlayStation tablet (updated)01:06:02 - Nokia: 'Our first priority is beating Android'01:06:20 - Eric Schmidt: 'We certainly tried' to get Nokia to use Android01:06:40 - HTC CEO Peter Chou on Microsoft / Nokia partnership: 'it'll make the ecosystem stronger'01:07:00 - The Engadget Interview: Microsoft's Aaron Woodman talks Windows Phone 7 and Nokia01:07:30 - Windows Phone 7's multitasking uses zoomed-out cards to check on your apps01:08:50 - Microsoft Rally Ball demo shows Windows Phone 7, Kinect, Xbox Live living in perfect harmony (video)01:09:10 - Microsoft shows off WP7's future with multitasking, Twitter integration, and IE9, all coming this year01:12:40 - Nokia's marginalization of MeeGo came as a surprise to Intel01:13:58 - Intel's Otellini insists company is committed to MeeGo, says he 'understood' why Nokia moved to Microsoft01:14:25 - Editorial: Intel keeps pushing MeeGo, but why?01:14:50 - Intel shows off more of its MeeGo Tablet UI, still needs lots of work01:27:50 - Motorola Atrix 4G reviewHear the podcastSubscribe to the podcast[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (enhanced AAC).[RSS MP3] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in MP3) to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically.[RSS AAC] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in enhanced AAC) to your RSS aggregator.[Zune] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in the Zune MarketplaceDownload the podcastLISTEN (MP3)LISTEN (AAC)LISTEN (OGG)Contact the podcast1-888-ENGADGET or podcast (at) engadget (dot) com.Twitter: @joshuatopolsky @futurepaul @engadget @reckless
Visualized: Motorola Xoom rolls into Best Buy
Sure, you've probably seen plenty of the Motorola Xoom by now, but have you seen a stack of them being rolled into a Best Buy? Didn't think so. Well, you can now rest assured that they are indeed arriving in stores ahead of the big Thursday launch date, thanks to the helpful tipster who sent us this image. Unfortunately, it seems that a few pieces fell off the truck on the road to retail.
Motorola Xoom will ship without Flash support on February 24th, expects it in 'Spring 2011' (updated)
Verizon's webpage dedicated to the Xoom has just gone up and one of our eagle-eyed readers has already spotted a disquieting bit of small print: "Adobe Flash expected Spring 2011." You don't sit around expecting what you already have, so that leads us to conclude that the Xoom, the mighty iPad-slaying, Honeycomb-bringing, world-changing tablet... won't have Flash at launch. The version of Adobe's rich media player it's waiting for is most probably 10.2 for mobile devices, scheduled to arrive in the coming weeks, which should mean first-day buyers this Thursday will get a limited-time premium feature on their tablets: no Flash ads. [Thanks, Chris] Update: Motorola has confirmed this, in a very roundabout fashion. The company's statement in full: "Motorola XOOM will include full support for Adobe® Flash® Player® for accessing the rich video and animations of the web, to be available after launch."
Motorola Xoom up for in-store pre-order at Best Buy, $800 for Thursday availability
No more stunt prices, no more premature web appearances, this (we hope) is finally Best Buy's fully official listing for the Motorola Xoom. It brings no great surprises to those who've been tracking the tablet's progress to retail shelves, offering first dibs to buyers willing to make the effort and pre-order one in store today, with full availability coming on Thursday, February 24th. The $800 3G-equipped model is accompanied on Best Buy's site by a $40 portfolio case, a $50 basic charging dock, a $130 stereo speaker dock, and a $70 Bluetooth keyboard, but there's no sighting of the cheaper WiFi-only Xoom. There was some suspicion that the $600 SKU would launch a little later on and that is indeed what appears to be happening. One final note of caution: even if you're intending to use the Xoom as a pure WiFi-only device, remember that you'll be required to activate data with Verizon for at least a month first -- don't ask us why. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Motorola Xoom manual now available for download, ready to expose the ins and outs of Honeycomb
Wish you had your Xoom tablet already? Yeah, us too. We can't get you there, but thanks to Droid Live you can at least pore over every page of the thing's manual. 64 pages, actually, covering everything from how to turn it on to, well, how to turn it off again. Looking for other excitement? You'll find a hipster on a bench on page 10, what appears to be Joanna Newsom on page 30, and a disgustingly happy couple on page 33. Oh, and lots and lots of details bout Honeycomb too. Check it out! [Thanks, Andy]
Motorola Xoom vs. Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 vs. LG G-Slate -- battle of the Tegra 2 Honeycomb tablets
Hello, Moto -- no wait, Samsung... or is it LG? Three of the world's biggest smartphone makers have leapt at the opportunity to serve up Google's brand new Honeycomb build of Android, however their selection of menu items looks to be somewhat lacking in diversity. Motorola's Xoom matches Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 in both screen size and resolution (1280 x 800), while LG's Optimus Pad / G-Slate offers only marginally smaller measurements with an 8.9-inch display spanning 1280 x 768. More than that, all three tablets run the bone-stock Honeycomb UI and are built around NVIDIA's 1GHz Tegra 2 system-on-chip, leaving little room for differentiation on the basis of user experience or internal performance (LG would have you believe its 3D camcorder is a big advantage for its slate, but we're not so sure). Most choices between the three, then, will come to things like brand loyalty, ergonomics and pure, basic aesthetic appeal. To help you judge the latter of those three points, we've prepared an exhaustive barrage of side-by-side photos below -- we expect you to view every last one of 'em... at least twice. %Gallery-116882% %Gallery-116881% %Gallery-116879%