If you’re still holding out for a MotorolaXoom, here’s some good news. The folks at Droid Life snagged a picture of a Staples ad depicting March 27th as the targeted release date for the slate. In addition, the tablet appears to be retailing for 600 bucks — one the cheapest models money can buy. A Xoom, TI-Nspire and a new pack of pens, all from one place? Man, that really was easy.
The Xoom may have gotten a slight software update last night to prepare it for its long-awaited Flash playing capabilities, but some of the folks over at SlateDroid have an even more impressive — though much less official — update, bringing USB host functionality to Moto’s slate. Tinkerer-extraordinaire roebeet is the man to thank, granting Xoom owners the ability to read media from USB drives, essentially giving you a limitless amount of storage — provided you own the necessary microUSB OTG (on-the-go) cable and a rooted Xoom. If you’ve safely satisfied the pre-requisites, enabling the new-new is just a few file transfers and command line entries away. Full instructions available at the source link… if you dare.
In this week’s podcast, we can’t avoid it: We start off by talking about the iPad 2, which some people have hyperbolically called the “best gadget they’ve ever reviewed.” It goes on sale Friday, and we’ll have more to say about it once we’ve had a chance to test it fully.
There’s a new version of Flipboard out, which adds social search and some other new features. But the thing we’re excited about is a Flipboard version of Wired.com, which lets you read all the awesome content on this website, except in a more beautiful format that’s designed just for the iPad screen. It looks nice, and it’s free in the Apple App Store.
Speaking of tablets, there’s news about HP’s tablet operating system, webOS. In addition to the upcoming HP TouchPad, it will also be included on all of HP’s PCs starting in 2012, which should increase the potential audience for webOS developers.
Wired.com reviews editor Michael Calore comes onscreen to talk about the Motorola Atrix, a high-end 4G Android phone that we recently reviewed. It’s a great phone — but he’s less excited about the optional laptop-like dock that you can get for it.
Finally, we talk about AirPlay, Apple’s standard for streaming audio and video wirelessly. It’s a feature in the badass Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air.
Motorola Xoom is not the iPad, or even the Samsung Galaxy tablet–and the sales show it. Sales have fallen short of expectations, and now some people are expecting a production cut.
Here’s what analyst Peter Misek had to say about the Xoom sales,
Xoom sales have been underwhelming. While marketing has just started we believe MMI will likely have to cut production if it already has not done so. We believe the device has been a bit buggy and did not meet the magic price point of $500. We believe management knows this and is hurrying development and production of lower cost tablets. Importantly we believe management will likely have to make the painful decision to accept little to no margin initially in order to match iPad 2’s wholesale pricing.
Motorola has not released figures yet, however, IDC didn’t even list the device in its break down of tablet market share. Motorola has plans to lower the $800.00 price soon, which might help a bit.
If you’re Motorola, today might not be the day to try to get the world to pay attention to your new tablet. After all, everyone is a bit fixated with that other device at the moment. The one that’s launching today. You know, the one with the 90 percent tablet market share.
Still, no doubt sick and tired of having the second generation iPad steal its spotlight in recent weeks, Motorola today announced that it will begin rolling out a system update tonight aimed at prepping the device for the March 18th release of Adobe Flash Player 10.2.
The company has long offered Flash as selling point in the company’s battle against the iPad, with Steve Jobs’s on-going snubbing of the otherwise ubiquitous software, for reasons of security, batter life, and overall user experience. The Xoom didn’t actually ship with the software, however, waiting for the 3.0.1 Android Honeycomb update.
Contrary to reports floating about the web, the Motorola Xoom isn’t getting Adobe Flash Player 10.2 today — rather, the tablet is getting updated to support Flash, which will actually arrive in one week. Adobe now says that Flash Player 10.2 will be ready to download from the Android Market on March 18th, supporting only Honeycomb tablets (in other words, just the Xoom) to start, and will eventually be available for Android 2.2 smartphones — again, contrary to what we’d been told, but we can’t really complain on that count supporting Android 2.2 (Froyo), Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and a beta version for Android 3.0.1 (Honeycomb) at release. Froyo devices won’t get the full battery-friendly Stage Video rendering pipeline and deep browser integration like their Honeycomb tablet brethren, but dual-core phones will reportedly see a performance improvement nonetheless, and there’s a new tweak that’ll let Flash web apps pull up a virtual keyboard if needed for full functionality. PR after the break.
Update: Adobe contacted us to clarify that Flash 10.2 is, in fact, headed to all three of the most recent versions of Android on March 18th — the Honeycomb tablet version will simply sport a beta label, and the smartphone builds will lack full functionality as described above.
In the spirit of issuing software updates with the sole purpose of preparing for more software updates, Motorola says there’s about to be some brand new firmware for the Xoom, which will cross the Ts and dot the Is required to install the promised Adobe Flash Player 10.2. The company doesn’t say when, exactly, to expect Flash, only that it’s “coming soon,” but the update will also fix a bug with Daylight Savings Time, which — given recenthistory — should find itself richly welcomed. If you’re paying Verizon for 3G bandwidth, you can expect an OTA update in the days to come.
You know how it works: people see unusual product names in inventory systems, and imaginations start running wild. We’d been hearing some pretty crazy things about the rumored Droid X2 for Verizon, only to have those expectations reigned in to a light refresh — and in light of the Droid Bionic’s upcoming launch, a deeply overhauled Droid X launching in roughly the same time frame never made a ton of sense in the first place. On that note, we’ve just been hit with a memo that’s supposedly floating around SCK — the Radio Shack subsidiary responsible for Sam’s Club kiosks — that calls the X2 “a new Droid X version” with a 2GB bundled microSD card replacing the original model’s 16GB… and it’ll sell for the same price.
Now, we’d heard from our sources before that the X2 would be warmed over with a front-facing camera and the same 1.2GHz single-core processor bump that the Chinese version recently received. Nothing in the SCK memo suggests that’s not happening, and the microSD card reduction might mean there’ll be more internal storage space, too. We can hope, right?
[Thanks, anonymous tipster]
Update: Several folks have written in to point out that the Droid X packages with the smaller microSD cards are already in other retail outlets, so SCK may just be playing catch-up. If so, that’s a horrible choice of name for the inventory system, we’d say. Thanks, everyone!
Happy news for Android tinkerers everywhere — Motorola has officially confirmed it will attempt to perform its 4G upgrade on all Verizon Wireless-riding Xoom tablets it receives from users, whether they’ve been rooted, repainted, or accessorized with fluffy dice. Naturally, the company can’t guarantee successful software updates on devices that have had their OS tweaked, so it asks users to be kind and rewind to the original firmware state. For those unwilling to stretch that far back, Moto will still give it a shot and says that it’ll install the 4G LTE modem at a minimum. What a refreshingly open-minded attitude. Now if Moto could give us an open-minded bootloader on its phones as well, we’d be all set.
Motorola’s got a fine smartphone in the Atrix 4G, but a mildly unsatisfactory pair of modular docks. Good thing, then, that you can gain the most intriguing functionality they add without buying one! Fenny of xda-developers reportedly figured out a way to modify the phone’s APK files to activate Webtop mode over a standard HDMI cable — with no dock needed as a go-between — allowing you to experience the Atrix’s PC-like functionality when connected to any HDMI-ready computer monitor or TV. Of course, you’ll need a rooted and deodexed phone to give it a try, but we hear those aren’t monumentally difficult to come by.
While Fenny’s hack could potentially make the desktop dock obsolete — assuming you’ve got a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard handy — Motorola’s LapDock is still something else. It’s razor-thin, it doesn’t require a separate monitor, and it charges your phone. So, before you write it off entirely, you might at least want to indulge your morbid curiosity about what’s inside, and thus there’s a complete teardown video after the break to show you what the guts look like. Enjoy!
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