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iPad 2 specs discerned, 900MHz dual-core ARM CPU and PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU blow away graphical benchmarks
iFixit may have physically uncovered Apple's latest silicon, but it's the processor gurus that have discovered what's truly inside -- using software benchmarks, they've unearthed the speeds and feeds of the Apple A5. As you'll no doubt be aware having read our headline above, there actually isn't a 1GHz CPU at the helm, as AnandTech and IOSnoops report the dual-core ARM chip is dynamically clocked around 900MHz, likely in search of reduced power consumption. Perhaps more interestingly for all you gamers in the audience, the iPad 2 reports that it has a dual-core PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU on the die as originally foretold -- and, spoiler alert -- it mops the floor with both the original iPad and the Motorola Xoom. Though the new chip didn't quite demonstrate 9X the graphical prowess of its predecessor, it rendered 57.6 frames per second in a GLBenchmark test where the (admittedly higher-res) Tegra 2 tablet managed only 26.7fps, and last year's iPad pulled only 17.6fps. That's some serious Tai Chi. Hit up our source links to see the difference it can make in games like Infinity Blade. Update: Though it sure sounds like there's a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 in there, that's not yet a proven fact -- we only know that it's a dual-core ARM v7 chip which performs relatively similarly in non-graphical tests. [Thanks, Jim] [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Xoom gets USB host functionality, no thanks to Motorola or Google
The Xoom may have gotten a slight software update last night to prepare it for its long-awaited Flash playing capabilities, but some of the folks over at SlateDroid have an even more impressive -- though much less official -- update, bringing USB host functionality to Moto's slate. Tinkerer-extraordinaire roebeet is the man to thank, granting Xoom owners the ability to read media from USB drives, essentially giving you a limitless amount of storage -- provided you own the necessary microUSB OTG (on-the-go) cable and a rooted Xoom. If you've safely satisfied the pre-requisites, enabling the new-new is just a few file transfers and command line entries away. Full instructions available at the source link... if you dare.
Motorola Xoom update rolling out starting tonight, brings 'required enhancements' for Flash 10.2
In the spirit of issuing software updates with the sole purpose of preparing for more software updates, Motorola says there's about to be some brand new firmware for the Xoom, which will cross the Ts and dot the Is required to install the promised Adobe Flash Player 10.2. The company doesn't say when, exactly, to expect Flash, only that it's "coming soon," but the update will also fix a bug with Daylight Savings Time, which -- given recent history -- should find itself richly welcomed. If you're paying Verizon for 3G bandwidth, you can expect an OTA update in the days to come. [Thanks, Bob, Jake and Oscar]
iPad 2 success will burst the bubble for competing tablet manufacturers
Analyst Mark Moskowitz of J.P. Morgan Research predicts the success of the iPad 2 will cause oversupply problems for competing tablet manufacturers. Moskowitz claims manufacturers looking to compete with the iPad 2 have extremely ambitious build plans that will hurt them in the long run. According to his analysis, tablet makers could build up to 65.1 million tablets in 2011, a number which greatly exceeds his estimate of 47.9 million in unit sales. This enthusiasm to duplicate the iPad's success could lead to an oversupply in tablets and components used to build these tablets. In a worst case scenario, tablet makers may have an oversupply of 51%. Moskowitz claims the iPad 2 will continue to lead the tablet market in 2011, a sentiment echoed in other reports. The J.P. Morgan analyst views the Motorola Xoom and the upcoming HP Touchpad as potential competitors to the iPad, but claims consumers may be "underwhelmed" by the remaining tablet products slated to hit the shelves in 2011.
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 overclocked to 1.5GHz, eats Quadrant and Linpack for breakfast (video)
Hold on to your hats, gents, because things just got real -- that's a Motorola Xoom in the picture above, clocked at a blazing 1.504GHz. While we highly doubt that's a new world record of any sort, the dual-core Tegra 2 inside seriously screams at that clockspeed, scorching Quadrant to the tune of 3105 (remember this?) and delivering 47 MFLOPS in Linpack. Oh, and in case you're curious, this achievement wasn't some random hack. It was perpetrated for our collective benefit by the master of SetCPU himself, and you'll find full video proof of his accomplishment below and instructions at our source link. Got root? Then you're on your way. [Thanks, Adam B.]
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 rooted in two hours flat, sinister transforming exoskeleton jetpack returns in Verizon ad
What's the first thing you're going to do with your Motorola Xoom? If you're Koush, the answer's clear -- install your very own ClockworkMod recovery image and ROM Manager, and grant the latter superuser permissions. That's right, on the very day of release, the Motorola Xoom's all but ready for custom builds of Android and all the joy they bring. Meanwhile, Verizon's decided to bring us the latter half of the abruptly cut Xoom TV ad, which actually differs significantly depending on whether or not Spanish is your primary language. Either way, it's a fairly sordid affair, with no Iron Man feats of stratospheric skill to be found, merely a short demonstration of gaming with the accelerometer and a few quick swipes through Honeycomb. You'll still watch it if we tell you it's after the break though, won't you?
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]
