Motorola Xoom Tablet - Can It Kill the iPad?

Motorola's much publicised Xoom tablet, powered by Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb, goes on sale Thursday with many potential tablet buyers waiting to see how it can fulfill its tag Xoom slogan: Redefining the Tablet Experience. The Motorola Xoom is will be the first tablet to run on the much-awaited Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS and dubbed as the 1st serious competitor to Apple’s iPad. Crowned the best gadget at the giant Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2011 in Las Vegas last month, the hype surround the Motorola Xoom is gaining traction as the official sales date draws closer.

Apple sold more than 15 million iPads since its launch in April 2010 in the timeframe which the iPad had the market virtually to itself. The market for tablet is undeniably huge. No wonder so many are having a go at it. There will be increased competition in 2011 from Google, HP, RIM, Samsung and now Motorola. With the tablet market being such big piece of a pie just sitting their waiting to be captured, Motorola has made the right move to muscle out Apple’s dominance.

The Motorola Xoom hardware supports high-definition 1080p video playback. It has a 2 MP front-facing camera for video chatting via Google Talk over regular Wi-Fi or 3G and a rear-facing 5 MP camera with LED flash for photos and 720p HD video. The Xoom has a 1280×800 widescreen, now--tablet-standard 10.1-inch HD display and 3D graphics acceleration with HDMI-out support for you to hook it up with your HDTV. It boasts a few different types of sensors (gyroscope, magnetometer, accelerometer and barometer). Nope, still no USB port for a tablet. We’re still waiting for the 1st major player to come out with a tablet which has a USB port.

The default advantage that other tablets will always have is Adobe Flash support which Apple iPhone and iPad do not support. However, at first release, Adobe Flash and SD card feature will not be functional. Adobe Flash support will be available through an update via Android Marketplace in Spring 2011. A future software update will enable the SD slot. What a bummer. I guess Motorola must be very desperate to push their product out to the market before iPad 2 does while they let the software update team work on it at the same time. Who knows, this might actually trigger iPad 2 to be launched earlier than Apple had planned. But being typical Apple, they don’t need to because they always say theirs are the best.

The Xoom will run Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb, whose new features include a redesigned specifically to tablets, tablet-optimized user interface, a 3D desktop purportedly taken from BumpTop (which Google acquired in April 2010), improved multitasking, Google Maps 5 in 3D and browser enhancements. All previous Android tablets, most notably the Samsung Galaxy Tab, have run builds of the OS designed for smartphones, which took a bashing from Apple for ruining the market with a 7 inch screen on a smartphone OS.

The Motorola Xoom is retailed at $799.99 without contract and $599.99 with a 2-year data plan. At a staggering $800 price tag, there also doubters out there thinking anything over $500 cannot compete with the Apple iPad. What say you?

Motorola XOOM Tablet
OSAndroid 3.0 Honeycomb
DifferentiationLarger display in smaller form-factor, 1080p HD support, first tablet with Honeycomb software, dual-core 1GHz processor, and a wide range of docking options
Dimensions249.1mm (h) x 167.8mm (w) x 12.9mm (d)
Display10.1” 1280x800 resolution
Weight730 g
ProcessorNVIDIA® Tegra™ 2: 1GHz dual-core processor
BatteryUp to 10 hour video playback
Connectivity3.5mm, micro USB 2.0 HS, Corporate Sync, Wi-Fi 2.4GHz & 5GHz 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR + HID
Network3G, 4G LTE upgradeable, 802.11n w/Personal Hotspot
Messaging/Web/AppsEmail (Corporate Sync, Google Mail, POP3/IMAP embedded, Push Email, Yahoo Mail) , WebKit w/ Flash
AudioAAC, AAC+, AMR NB, AMR WB, MP3, XMF
Video720p capture/1080p playback/streaming, H.263, H.264, MPEG4
Camera5 MP rear-facing camera with dual LED flash/2MP front-facing camera
Memory32GB on board user memory, SD card support after software update, 1GB DDR2 RAM

And you can get your hands on one easily via Amazon.com, my favorite and most trusted online market place. Oh yeah, by the way, now Amazon Prime members can enjoy Instant Video streaming. We’ll see how many would swap NetFlix for Amazon Prime in 3 months.

iPad 2 Announcement Boiling

There have been rumors circling around about the near future announcement of the next generation Apple iPad, dubbed the iPad 2. We have all read about various reports about the new features of the upcoming iPad 2 like front facing camera, rear speakers and SD card slot to name a few. Now a new rumor has surfaced that the iPad 2 will be announced on March 2 in where else, San Francisco California!

Besides that, we are expecting a new lineup of MacBook Pros to be revealed by Apple this coming Thursday. The MacBook Pro lineup is long due for an overhaul to add some refreshments to it, something which they have done over the time for the successful Apple iPhone. New MacBook Pro will be another shot in the arm for Apple. And we’ll see if there’s any surprise from the iPad 2 to recapture some of the tablet market share taken away by the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Also noteworthy is that Samsung has already announced its 2nd gen tablet to rival the iPad (well, they are actually targeting iPad 2) with an improvement which drives the screen size to 10.1 inch from the previous smaller-than-ideal-for-tablet 7 inch.

2011 F1 Bahrain GP Cancelled Amid Gulf Unrest - Delay or Postponeme​nt Possible

It’s official. The cancellation of the 2011 Formula 1 (F1) season opener of the Bahrain GP has been expected by many due to the unrest encircling the Gulf region. The crown prince has decided to put a stop to the Bahrain GP for the sake of the nation’s political stability. It is safe move taking into consideration the calculated risk of negative exposure Bahrain may receive in the event of any unwanted incidents during the Bahrain GP weekend which was scheduled to take its stage on March 11 2011. They obviously do not want to show the world what they’re incapable of under the scrutiny of Bernie Ecclestone. Imagine viewers from all around the globe seeing a disruption to the F1 race or worse still, military force being exerted to control the situation.

So now teams will have to wait 3 weeks longer to strut their new machines and pit against each other for a head start early in the season. Looks like we’ll have to wait for March to see how does Ferrari’s F150 cope with Red Bull’s RB7 and McLaren’s MP4-26.

Also noteworthy is the match up of Lotus vs Lotus in Lotus Racing vs Lotus Renault as the damaging impact of the ongoing legal battle between Lotus Racing’s owner Tony Fernandes and the Malaysian automaker Proton who has a controlling stake of Lotus. Neither would budge on the issue; Proton doesn’t want to see its Lotus brand exploited by Fernandes’ Tune group while Fernandes is not willing to step down from the challenge because he doesn’t need to be bullied out on this fight. Tony Fernandes had bought the rights to Team Lotus from David Hunt, brother of former F1 World Champion James who had bought the defunct team some 13 years ago and Proton claims that they should have the rights to the Lotus name.

Samsung Galaxy Tab II - 10.1" Screen with Android 3.0 Honeycomb and 1GHz Chip

Samsung is about to unveil the latest update to its iPad-rivalling Samsung Galaxy Tab II at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The new 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab II will run Android 3.0 Honeycomb at 1280 x 800 resolution and on a 1GHz processor. Also rumors are saying that it'd have an 8 megapixel camera with HD video recording as well. Looking at the pre-official event photo, it seems to be bridging the gap between the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Apple iPad, at least appearance wise.

Looks like Samsung has taken Steve Jobs' comments pretty seriously. The Apple CEO previously condemned the Samsung Galaxy Tab I because of its size, claiming at 7", it's too small. Now we'll need to see how the market responds to the Galaxy Tab II powered by Android 3.0 Honeycomb and whether it can compete with the iOS experience.