Hands on with the Motorola Xoom

The XOOM was, of course, the first tablet to run Google’s official tablet OS. If you buy it later this month, you’ll get it with Honeycomb 3.0, but an immediate upgrade to 3.1 is available, which includes the software necessary to enable the XOOM’s SD card reader.

The XOOM has an NVIDIA Tegra 2 1GHz dual-core processor, 1 GB of RAM and a 10.1-inch 1280×800 widescreen HD display. HDMI out allows you to hook the XOOM up to your HDTV and a 5MP rear-facing shooter captures 720p video, while the 2MP front-facing shooter enables video chats using Google Talk.

The XOOM has been blessed with the Android Market and supports Adobe Flash Player which is downloadable from the store. Other features include a gyroscope, barometer, e-compass, accelerometer and adaptive lighting. Motorola says you can get about eight to ten hours of video playback from the XOOM and apparently it charges in half the time of some competing tablets. Neat.

The XOOM comes with some accessory candy Motorola calls “Smart Accessories”. They include a Standard Dock for watching video content or listening to music through external speakers as the device charges. This is nice if you want to have your tablet stand up vertically like a laptop screen, and works nicely with the optional Bluetooth wireless keyboard — with special Android shortcut keys.

Finally, a Speaker HD Dock is also available for sending HD content directly to a TV via HDMI or listening to music through two built-in speakers.

I know there was some early speculation, but the XOOM does support the 900 MHz band.

Up and ’til this point, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 was the only worthy competitor to the front running iPad, in most markets around the world. In terms of specs the XOOM has the Tab outgunned with a better rear camera — 5MP vs 3MP — and and SD card reader. Although being technically superior to the Tab, the XOOM is about 4mm thicker and weighs roughly 130g more, to accommodate the extra gear.

The XOOM deserves some serious consideration if you’re into Android, and if it were my money, the XOOM would get my pick, as it’s clearly the best Android tablet available on South African shores right now.