Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Motorola Xoom Review


Got a Motorola Xoom from BestBuy but contrary to my expectation of making it my beloved tablet for a long time, I had to return it in a couple of days. I do see a lot of tweets from people claiming it's a great device and using video experiences as evidence and think it nice to share my own experience of the device.

Disclaimer: This is not to prevent any buyer from going ahead with their wish but for them to know exactly what they are paying so much for.

Likes
I like the feel of the device and the wide screen size that it offers. The power button location was well thought of and it fits nicely with my left index finger. Email application quite cool too and the concept of shifting view like a rotating cube I find appealing. Device battery life is great as I used this for hours without having to charge it. The video app is very good and play video nicely well.

Dislikes
The OS (Android HoneyComb) is still very buggy and you do not need to be a tech savvy user to break it. It's really not that functional yet due to the low number of available applications. I went ahead for sake of testing and installed the Asphalt game and some other apps. The game was rendered improperly, though works but the on-screen button will not work unless on some other location on the screen. GTalk app does not allow voice chat yet. Firing up the browser and navigating to Google, I noticed a twitch at the left side of the view causing improper rendering of the page. All other sites I was able to use it with seems fine though. Android market apps restrict the user to only landscape view.

The two segment at the back does not look all that nice but that's a little trivial. USB charging is not supported and makes use of Motorola charging port, though device has a micros USB port which is only for data transfer. The Motorola Xoom will also not recognize micro SD card yet, I understand Motorola is working on a fix as I called BestBuy concerning this. The volume buttons when depressed breaks the audio for a little while hindering smooth audio while increasing or decreasing volume. Also pinch to zoom does not work everywhere. The on-screen keyboard and key sizes does not make for great typing along with the form factor. Typing on this device is not smooth.

Conclusive View
I really do think Motorola and maybe Google rushed this device to the market and they should be nice enough to admit that. Paying so much for that device for someone with no access to credit, it's really was annoying that usability of the device sucks so badly for me that I had to return it before it starts taking scratches. The device have potentials no doubt but a lot of work still needs to be done on the overall experience.

The Xoom being a flagship android tablet has not been able to overtake the Samsung Galaxy tab with which runs a better tested OS (Froyo) and most android apps runs smoothly on it.