I figured it's time that the Xoom got it's own thread, instead of being buried in the Samsung Tab area. Instead of being a 7 inch phone like the Tab, the Xoom represents Google's honest effort to enter the tablet arena.

The reviews are all coming out now and the units will be available for sale tomorrow (the 24th). I'll definitely say I'm far more impressed with the Xoom vs the iPad compared to the iPhone 3G vs the TMobile G1.

Engadget has a brief review and video here.

And Anandtech has a much more in depth review here.

From looking at both reviews, the Xoom definitely hits the same very high battery life marks that the iPad set. This to me is still the biggest advantage of the iPad, and I'm glad Motorola agreed. The downside is that the Xoom has a proprietary charger, instead of being able to trickle charge off USB. While the iPad has a non standard port, it's practically a standard with how long the 30 pin dock connector has been around. It's really easy to charge anywhere. The Xoom is going to require owners to keep the power brick with them if they want to charge on the go.

Speed wise, the Xoom definitely outpaces the iPad by a noticeable bit when web browsing. Being that it's a year after the iPad, this is somewhat to be expected, though I was impressed by how much faster it is. The browser is also much more feature rich, bringing tablets even closer to the desktop. Noticeably absent though? Flash support. Seems Adobe as usual wasn't ready, and will have 10.2 out for tablets "soon". I'll be curious to see how much it impacts battery life and speed, and hope Anand retests. My number two reason for not wanting Flash has always been performance issues (with #1 being due to the proprietary nature).

Hardware wise, there are even less buttons then the iPad. The Xoom has a volume up, volume down, and a power/lock button that is oddly placed on the back. It lacks a switch of any kind, so mute or orientation lock will be software only. It does offer both a rear and front camera, though it still seems very awkward to try and use it as an actual camera. It should work well for video conferencing though, allowing someone to either do a face to face chat, or use the rear camera to show an event to someone remotely. Screen wise, Anand noted the colors do distort at extreme angles, and the contrast isn't as great as it could be. Overall the screen seem decent though. One odd aspect is that the device does have a currently unusable microSD card slot, and the SIM slot for LTE. Both will be usable down the road, with LTE requiring the device to be shipped off to be upgraded.

Software, this is where the big changes are. There will definitely be a learning curve even for existing Android users, and I'm impressed Google was willing to rethink so much. iOS feels ok when scaled up to the iPad, but it definitely shows it's phone roots. Honeycomb appears to take more from the desktop to create a different approach. Unfortunately both reviews noted multiple rough edges, including application stability issues. It's clear this was probably pushed out a little too soon, and hopefully updates will come much more rapidly then they have for the typical Android phone. Google did put more effort into the media aspects of the device then they normally do, but fans of the syncing method will still have to look for third party solutions to manage what media goes onto the device. One thing I noticed, neither review showed the device in action in portrait mode. I find I use both portrait and landscape modes on the iPad quite a bit, though it seems Google went for a more landscape focused setup between the way the UI works, and the more widescreen 16:10 aspect ratio.

Price is where a lot of people still balk. It is officially $799 to buy the device. On top of that, there is a mandatory one month of 3G data at $20 (for 1GB) + a $35 activation fee just to be able to turn on the WiFi. Out the door usable cost is now $854 in the US, a cost difference of $125 when compared to the equivalent iPad. Oh, and the bad news about the 3G service? It's an additional $35 each time you want to turn it back on. With the iPad, users are free to turn on and off the 3G service on a month to month basis, and no extra fees are tacked on. Apple will likely force this same deal when Verizon sees an iPad 2 with 3G, and it's a shame Google didn't.

The other option is to buy it subsided for $599, + 24 months of $20 data service + the $35 activation fee for a TCO price of $1114. No word on what pricing will be for LTE plans at this point.

Anyone here planning on buying one?

Despite the fact that I'm a Google fanatic, there's just no way I can justify purchasing a Xoom. It's just too damned expensive.

I think Honeycomb looks very interesting, and at the very least they finally got around to updating the music app, which has really been terrible and it's inexcusable that it's gone unadressed for this long.

I'm concerned about some of the things the Engadget review said about Honeycomb. I've always actually liked the four buttons found on most Android phones. I use the menu button and back button constantly when using this phone, and the menu button really lets app developers tuck away a nice set of options off the screen. Now the menu button has been replaced by a top-right selection of options that change based on context, and it sounds like this can get a little confusing when you're really trying to move around apps like GMail.

I also share your concerns about the portrait mode. I haven't seen a single shot of the home screen in portrait. It's possible that it doesn't actually rotate on the home screen. In 2.2 on my Nexus One, the opposite is true: the homescreen is locked into portrait mode. Engadget also mentions that holding the device in portrait is a little unwieldy, due to the length being much longer than the iPad. This would be a concern for me because I plan to read comics on my future tablet and it might get tiring to hold it that way.

I'm still holding out hope that Motorola's competitors are going to drastically undercut the Xoom's pricing. I can't see the other tablets in the pipeline costing as much as this one.

I can't see that happening with Apple all but controlling global LCD and flash availability and therefore a huge influence on price.

Many of these announced and as yet unshipped devices are going to get a huge canon ball to the side next week. Many of them are going to sink before they ever get a chance to sail.

The only thing that's more ridiculous than Motorola's pricing on the Xoom is the way the release and sales are being handled. The thing has been total clusterfuck with Verizon, IMO. Now the latest is that LTE will ship in 90 days. That's going to be a long 90 days. If Motorola is currently sitting on a huge margin they may have a chance be significantly dropping the price, but I think they're sitting on thin margins as it is and won't have any room for that, nor to ramp the product into significant enough volumes to change the situation in the next 3 to 4 months.

Priceless. An image of the Xoom browsing the Xoom web page. This is a perfect example of Motorola's ineptitude. When you can' even make sure that your flagship product can actually browse its own product page, I don't think you have any business being a part of this market.

Sure, Adobe has yet to deliver a tablet version of Flash. That's no surprise and any OEM that thought to rely on Adobe is getting what they deserve. But there's no reason to use Flash on the Xoom web page. First you're excluding visitors from anyone using the market-leading product, and secondly (and obviously) if your own product doesn't have flash, your own customers won't be able to see the web page. Those are just obvious. The first would make sense if you had any intentions to try and capture any market share from your competition. The second because if you're advertising a product that can handle the full web, you should make sure your own site loads first and foremost.

Besides that there's the actual content itself. Pretty much just text and static images. Nothing that would even require javascript and could have been handled with good old HTML and CSS2.

Walt Mossberg found the Xoom's battery lasted about 7.5 hours versus 11.something on the iPad playing video while connected to the net. Motorola under-delivering on promised longevity and Apple over-delivering.

Anand's review showed better (by almost 2 hours) battery life on the Xoom when web browsing over 3G when compared to the iPad. So it looks like it's going to depend on the situation.

And a review well worth reading would be the one from Andy Ihnatko.

I found this part especially amusing, and hopefully the reveal of iOS 5 next week brings an end to the fire extinguisher issue.

It really is bizarre isn't it ?

This was well known about a few days ago, people at Motorola must have know people were already saying that the XOOM wouldn't be able to read its own blurb page. Why on earth didn't they spend one man day on, at the very least, coming up with a simple HTML replacement that showed the text and images that the flash one does ???

Even more bizarre is that they didn't add XOOM to the Android auto complete dictionary !? How daft do you have to be to not do that ?

Guys, aren't those really minor criticisms and nit-picks? Clearly I haven't been a fan of the Xoom, but these don't seem like anything I'd care about.

First, they planed on having Flash on the platform, but it looks to me like they're waiting on Adobe for that. Sure, they should have done HTML5 or something, but It's going to come eventually. And why would you browse the Xoom site if you already have one?

As for the dictionary, I'm not sure you can add items to the dictionary on the default keyboard, can you? Besides, one of the nice things about Android is you can replace your keyboard. Swiftkey can easily add words to its dictionary just by typing them a few times.

I bookmarked the iPad section of Apple.com on my grandmothers iPad due to it having a number of videos and other helpful information bits about how to use the device. Everything on the site worked fine day one on the iPad.

It is a minor thing,but it's one of those minor things that adds up with other minor things to have a death by paper cuts situation. If Motorola can't be bothered to ensure the Xoom can see their own content without Flash, why should other sites change? Due to the hard stance of no Flash on iOS, sites scrambles to make things work without it. Since people know the Xoom will have Flash one day, they may not even bother till then, leading to a worse experience before it gets better.

Its like my Android experience on the Captivate. Due to sites either expecting me to have Flash(that I couldn't get due to being stuck on 2.1), or due to whatever little crappy Flash Lite it shipped with; I ran into way more problems of not being able to see content on the device compared to my iOS browsing.

It's just a sign of Motorola's complete lack of attention to detail, even when that detail would only help to better serve their own image.

The Xoom is already dead and it's just started to ship.

Of course they're waiting on Adobe. Apple would still be waiting on Adobe today to supply Flash for the iPhone and iPad too. Supporting Flash is short-sighted and not at all in the long-term interest of anyone but Adobe.