Sunday, February 10, 2013

Is The Motorola Xoom still Good?


If you've been following my work, you probably know I have an iPad 4 and Motorola Xoom. Although the Xoom is pushing its second birthday, and in terms of tablets, its getting to be old, the question is it still any good? This really depends on a few factors, and later on in this article, I'll explain how you can upgrade your Xoom to the latest version of Android, even though Google stopped updating the Xoom at 4.1.1.
When the Motorola Xoom was released, it came with Android Honeycomb 3.0, and it was pretty amazing in my opinion. It was the first Honeycomb tablet, and although the OS did seem to be a little rushed, you could tell the hardware of the Motorola Xoom was well thought out, in fact I'm actually doing something right now while I'm writing this article that I haven't done in quite some time; I'm writing this article on my Xoom. The rear facing camera of the Xoom was pretty decent, and on paper, it had a comparable front facing camera to the iPad 2. It had 1 GB of RAM, along with a dual core Tegra 2 1GHz processor, which Motorola made sure you knew about every time you booted your device. It had, and still does have pretty decent specs for a tablet. Sure, it may not have a quad core processor, but when you think about it, do you really need a processor that powerful? Developers just need to design software that isn't as hard on resources, and everything would be good.
Another feature of the Motorola Xoom seems to be a little less known for some reason, but its still pretty big. Heres a hint: Every Nexus device has it. The Motorola Xoom has a pure Android experience. No useless skins. Its Android as Google intended it to be. The Motorola Xoom is very much like a predecessor to the Nexus 10, which also has a dual core processor. The Motorola Xoom in many ways was ahead of its time. This tablet is two years old, yet the specs of it are still pretty decent. That should say something. When I picked the Motorola Xoom, I also looked at Samsung's line of Galaxy Tab's. They were nice, but the biggest reason I didn't get one is because it felt as if it was cheaply made, and would break easily. The skin that was atop Android wasn't what I was looking for either. I'm not saying it was ugly, but it just wasn't for me. I'm happy that I picked the Xoom almost two years ago. It still works great two years later, and I still have that pure Android experience. Today, I also have an iPad 4, but I'm now using both, and they're both starting to replace my main PC, as my PC is just becoming less and less unnecessary.
I've also heard people say that the Xoom is heavy, and the iPad is light, but in actuality, the Xoom weighs 1.6 pounds while the iPad weighs 1.4 pounds. Not much of a difference in my opinion.
Sadly, Google has stopped releasing updates for the Xoom, which was expected, but was still unfortunate, considering the Xoom can easily support Android 4.2. Since I couldn't just update to 4.2 from 4.1.1, I decided to try something a little different. I installed CyanogenMod 10.1, which is a custom Android ROM. Its just a custom version of Android 4.2. When I finally installed this, I noticed significant performance gains over Android 4.1.1, which was an improvement over Android 4.0, but Android 4.2 really was a buttery experience. Much of the Android lag that I had complained about before in the past was long since gone. Although it wasn't entirely gone, and was still there in a few

places, much of it was resolved. The Motorola Xoom supports Android 4.2 perfectly. I have the 32GB version with a 16GB MicroSD card, so space has never been an issue for me on it. The only real reason that I think Google had to quit supporting the Xoom was the Nexus 10. As a business move, it made perfect sense for Google to cut the Xoom, but it wasn't something that had to be done. The Xoom still supports it, and as long as developers keep making custom ROM's for it, it will never become a legacy device or anything like that, at least for the foreseeable future.
The Xoom also had a few accessories made for it from Motorola. Much like the tablet, the Bluetooth keyboard and dock were of good quality, and the keyboard is actually compatible with any device that supports Bluetooth keyboards.
To conclude all of this, I think the Motorola Xoom is "still good." The Xoom was ahead of its time, therefore its specs are still pretty decent even in today's world of 2013. I don't see the Xoom falling behind in updates as long as developers keep developing custom ROM's for the Xoom. If your a developer, I thank you. The dev never seems to get the recognition they deserve, so here you go. If your Xoom is still on 4.1.1 or lower, you should definitely look into CyanogenMod 10.1. Trust me, you won't regret it. If you don't how to install a custom ROM, just do a google search for a few how to's. There's thousands, no need for me to add to that list here.
Have you ever used the Motorola Xoom? If so, what did you think of it? Let us know in the comments.
Follow me on Twitter: @ck270

2 comments:

  1. Love the review man, and completely agree with everything you say. I think the Xoom, even though I have only fiddled around with it in a store, I thought it was a very sturdy and decently built device overall. I even wouldn't mind buying an refurb or slightly used one now as a device that I could take to college, and use a Bluetooth keyboard to write notes from class. Either that or as I told you just get an iPad mini. Seriously great job with this article man.

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