CES 2011 LIVE: Motorola Xoom Hands-On & Preview

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There was a lot of excitement and anticipation going around the Motorola Xoom Android tablet before CES. We’ve seen the Samsung Galaxy Tab come out for Samsung and do quite well, so can another top Android manufacturer do the tablet switch? We watched Motorola unveil the device at the press conference on Wednesday, but now we’ve gotten as close to it as Motorola will allow – how does it look up close and personal?

First, the Motorola Xoom was being held in a dimly lit part of the Motorola booth. On purpose? Who knows, but that’s why some of our pictures may not look so hot. As for the Xoom itself, Motorola wasn’t letting us touch them. They only had two units out, with a Motorola rep holding each one like a toddling mother. A gentlemen from another media outlet asked if he could just hold it briefly to gauge the weight and the Motorola rep yanked it away and said “It weighs about 1.5 pounds.” Okay…

Then, I noticed that the Xoom seemed to be pretty fast and responsive. But, it soon came to light that the Motorola reps weren’t actually using the device, they were just playing video on them that just showed what the Honeycomb operating system will look like. During the press conference, Motorola Mobility CEO did say that they could let the press touch the tablet because it ‘wasn’t quite finished’. At the booth, Google was blamed for it, saying that with Android 3.0 Honeycomb not being finished, they don’t want it out.

Click hands on images below for full size:

So, other than that, we just learned some light features of the device. It’s got a 10-inch screen, it’ll have support for 3G, WiFi and 4G LTE, it’s being sold by Verizon, etc. The Motorola rep told me it’ll have about “a day” of battery life when watching video. I take that to mean 8 hours and is pretty good, if true.

I don’t know what to think about the Xoom. It looks like a big Android tablet that’s well made. So it’s hard to judge how good it’ll be. Take a look at the pictures, let me know what you think in the comments.

Want to catch up with more of our CES 2011 Hand On postings? You can see an index of all our CES 2011 Hand On posts – each complete with their own gallery – here.