14 DAY TRIAL // The 2011 edition of MWC was the site where many slates were launched, but it seems not all of them were as well received as one may have expected, with a certain Motorola XOOM apparently found lacking in reviews.
As consumers know, quite a few slates were officially unveiled during the Mobile World Congress 2011 expo in Barcelona, Spain.
Most of them used an ARM platform and were loaded with the Android 3.0 operating system, said to be specifically tailored for tablets.
Needless to say, reviewers were quite eager to see just what such products could do and if the Honeycomb OS really was as impressive as rumors told.
Apparently, a certain Motorola XOOM failed to live up to its hype, as several reviews ended up with less praise than one may have expected.
AnandTech had one of the more positive views on the 10.1-inch tablet, praising the flexibility of the OS, the new UI (user interface) and the multitasking.
The downsides of its review were that animations were sloppy and that the lack of a SD card support in the test version didn't help, nor did the price.
In fact, the price of $800 drew the ire of Engadget and CNET as well, who also complained about the lack of tablet-oriented apps and the fact that the OS wasn't as intuitive as they may have liked.
Basically, the XOOM is still seen as a work in progress, with too many elements classifiable as rushed or unpolished. Engadget even went as far as advising prospective buyers to hold off on buying it and see if Google and Motorola change anything in response to the criticism.
Meanwhile, those that want an update on the specs should know that the center piece is a dual-core 1GHz processor, backed by 1 GB RAM and complemented by a 5 megapixel webcam on the back (plus a front-facing one for video calls), plus the full list of wireless capabilities.
Of course, it should be mentioned that many good things were said about the hardware and software, but there simply seemed to be insufficient reason to pay the aforementioned $800 price.