Verizon Motorola XOOM - The new tablet details are released

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By Salar Golestanian @ Thursday, February 24, 2011 :: 11:59 PM :: 580 Views :: 0 Comments ::

Android 3.0 Honeycomb promises to be more suited to tablets than previous versions with Dual-core processor and allowing Flash in the browser. Android has received a whole new user interface to take advantage of the abundant screen real estate. For example, Honeycomb adds a new way to get at your apps, beyond the shortcuts and widgets that you could pin to the home screens in previous versions of the operating system. Now you can drag and drop apps into shortcut groups, which are displayed in a carousel that looks like it's rotating in 3D.

In the ad, a leather-jacketed guy grabs the tablet and is whisked away into a spaceship, where he picks out the Vendetta app and begins playing. A voiceover rattles off Xoom’s chief attributes: a 1 GHz dual-processor, 3D graphics engine, a gyroscope and a widescreen HD display. Tagline: “Grab it and it grabs you.”

The ad comes after Motorola’s own ad for the Xoom, an epic 60-second Super Bowl spot that sought to one-up Apple’s iconic “1984” ad for the Macintosh. The ad coincides with Xoom’s release today at Best Buy and Verizon. The device goes for $799 at both outlets, but costs $599 with a 24-month Verizon contract.

The new YouTube interface shows a 3D scrolling carousel of video thumbnails. Google's plugging a new version of Maps for Honeycomb too. It shows the ghostly outline of buildings in 3D on the maps. Also new is a Google Editions ebook-reading app.

The Xoom has a 10.1-inch screen, with 1,290x800-pixel resolution and a 16:9 aspect ratio. Has a weight of 730g -- about the same as the 3G iPad and measuring 250 by 168 by 13mm.

The Xoom has a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with two LED photo lights, which makes it possible to use your tablet as a snapper. There's a 2-megapixel camera on the front for those vanity shots as well.

The cameras also shoot video, and the Xoom will offer video chat using Google Chat, or a range of other Android instant-messaging apps. The Xoom has a sleek looks despite having a 3.5mm headphone jack, a micro-USB port and a mini-HDMI port. Along with its 802.11n Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity.

Xoom is also offering two normal-sized USB ports, an HDMI port and two 5W speakers.The Xoom has 32GB of built-in memory next to the SD card slot on the top, there's also space for a microSD memory card.

Honeycomb doesn't support memory cards yet, but Motorola promises that, as soon as the software is smart enough, it will roll out an update to the tablet that will allow it to welcome a memory card into the fold.

Verizon Wireless today released its first ad for Motorola’s Xoom tablet, a futuristic spot that highlights the device’s ability to play Vendetta. A shortened version of the ad was released earlier this week, but Verizon loaded the full 30-second version to its YouTube page today.