Looks like Verizon’s idea of levying mandatory data fees on tablet buyers may be a global thing — not only will new Xoom owners have to activate and pay for a month of data, but an eagle-eyed tipster sent in this image of a Best Buy price tag that confirms the very same for Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. There’s nothing to suggest that WiFi-only versions of either tablet would be subject to the surcharge — with these cellular variants, we can almost understand — but we don’t see 3G iPads carrying mandatory activations, so what’s the deal, Verizon?
Motorola Xoom spec sheet, Mobile World Congress 2011. Photo Charlie Sorrel
We knew that Motorola’s Xoom tablet was going to cost $800 in its unencumbered, contract-free state, but now Verizon has revealed the price for those willing to sign up for data: $600.
To get that $200 savings, you’ll need to pledge two years to Verizon, at a minimum of $20 per month. For that you get the 3G Xoom and 1GB data. Totting that up over the life of the contract is $600 + (24 x 20) = $1,080. Being Verizon, you’ll probably have to toss in a one-off activation fee, too.
And what about 4G LTE? The Honeycomb-based tablet supports it, after all. The good news is that the upgrade will be free in the “second quarter of 2011″. Maybe it’ll come out at around the same time as Flash is hoped to be ready for the tablet.
The Xoom will be available from Verizon this Thursday, February 24th.
Verizon just filled in the rest of the Xoom pricing story — in addition to the $800 off-contract version that’s already up for pre-order at Best Buy, you’ll be able to sign a two-year data contract and pick up a Xoom for $600 upfront. That’s a decent savings, although you’ll be getting just 1GB of 3G data for $20/month, so it’s not exactly a stunning deal in the end: a Xoom and 24GB of data over two years for $1,080. On the plus side, Verizon has confirmed that the Xoom LTE upgrade will in fact be free when it goes live in Q2, which is terrific news — but we’re waiting to see what the LTE data plans look like before we get too excited. PR after the break.
Update: We’re hearing from Verizon reps that the Xoom will also be able to take advantage of the carrier’s larger data plans as well — $35 a month for 3GB, $50 a month for 5GB, and $80 a month for 10GB. Still no word on LTE pricing, though. [Thanks, droiddoesall]
Uh oh, Verizon’s got itself into a bit of hot water with the old FCC. An outage during a snowstorm last month has reportedly resulted in a whopping 10,000 calls to 911 not being connected by the big red carrier. That would be bad enough in itself, but the less-than-pleased Communications Commission also notes that the emergency services that missed out on these calls were not alerted to the connectivity failure — in fact, Maryland’s Montgomery County officers were the ones to inform Verizon of the fault it was having, which was then promptly repaired within 15 minutes. The FCC is now curtly asking the network to check its entire footprint for similar vulnerabilities — as the January events were apparently “not unique” — and to propose remedial actions and monitoring systems to prevent it happening again.
Verizon’s first Xoom ad is out leaving little doubt about how the company plans to market Motorola’s new tablet. While the Honeycomb slab might lack the Droid branding, VZW looks set to maintain the overtly machismo tone that helped sell so many Android handsets over the last year while dismissing any of that cerebral nonsense preferred by Motorola. And really, who amongst us, man or woman, can resist the temptation of strapping on an $800 jetpack come thursday?
No more stunt prices, no more premature web appearances, this (we hope) is finally Best Buy’s fully official listing for the Motorola Xoom. It brings no great surprises to those who’ve been tracking the tablet’s progress to retail shelves, offering first dibs to buyers willing to make the effort and pre-order one in store today, with full availability coming on Thursday, February 24th. The $800 3G-equipped model is accompanied on Best Buy’s site by a $40 portfolio case, a $50 basic charging dock, a $130 stereo speaker dock, and a $70 Bluetooth keyboard, but there’s no sighting of the cheaper WiFi-only Xoom. There was some suspicion that the $600 SKU would launch a little later on and that is indeed what appears to be happening. One final note of caution: even if you’re intending to use the Xoom as a pure WiFi-only device, remember that you’ll be required to activate data with Verizon for at least a month first — don’t ask us why.
Think the Atrix 4G might be a critical launch for Motorola right now? A fresh regulatory filing by Motorola today revealed that the company got a whopping 28 percent of its cash from Verizon last year — up from 17 percent in 2009 — a pretty powerful testament to the “Droid effect.” The company goes on to say that “the loss of, or a significant reduction in revenue from, one or more of these customers could have a negative impact on [its] business,” and it’s pretty clear that the launch of the iPhone on Verizon will have at least some impact this year. Question is, can they make up for the loss with a harder push on other carriers like AT&T?
This week’s episode of Gadget Lab covers highlights coming from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which was packed with tablets and smartphones.
The Motorola Xoom, one of the first tablets to run Android Honeycomb, finally got an official price tag: $800. It has a dual-core processor, a high-resolution screen and 4G compatibility, but would you pay that price? We doubt it, and so do many of our readers, apparently.
Another headliner at the show was Samsung’s awkwardly named Galaxy Tab 10.1. Wired.com’s Charlie Sorrel had some hands-on time with it and said the display was gorgeous, but the case felt like a cheap plastic toy.
One of the lamest tablets at the show was LG’s Optimus Pad. Most of the features are cool — a dual-core processor, front- and rear-facing cameras, and a high-resolution display — but the “3-D” spec made us roll our eyes. The 3-D mode makes images display as red and blue anaglyphs (which any computer screen could technically do), to create the cheap 3-D that’s been around for decades.
Moving on to phones, the most interesting smartphone coming from the show was the Xperia Play, which probably should’ve been called the PlayStation Phone. It plays PlayStation Portable games and includes a slide-out D-pad for controls. Pretty neat.
We take another look at the Verizon iPhone compared with the AT&T iPhone. Thousands of customers have been running bandwidth tests with the Speedtest.net iPhone app, and it looks like AT&T comes out ahead in terms of data transfer speeds — although from my previous tests, Verizon’s iPhone has been the more reliable phone.
Dylan wraps up the podcast with his favorite iPhone app of the week, Infinity Blade [iTunes], a fun slice-to-destroy 3-D game.
Verizon just began trials of its Home Phone Connect service in New York and Connecticut in December, but it looks like it’s already ironed out any kinks there might have been, as it’s now made the service available across the entire U.S. As with the trial, it will run you $19.99 a month for unlimited domestic calling or $9.99 a month to share minutes on your existing family plan, each option of which will let you make calls using any old landline phone that’s connected to the Home Phone Connect base station (included for free with a two-year contract). You’ll also, of course, get all the usual features you’d expect from a phone service, including caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding, three-way calling, voice mail, and 911 service. Hit up the source link below for all of the fine print.
It’s always seemed weird to us that given its advanced fiber technology Verizon’s FiOS TV service opted to deliver its channels the same way as traditional cable companies, but starting today users can taste the future since it’s added access to ESPN Networks online, following Time Warner and Brighthouse. That means you can stream the live ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPN Buzzer Beater (and ESPN Goal Line when football season begins again) channels over any broadband connection after heading over to FiOSTVCentral or ESPNnetworks.com to get started. Support for other authenticated devices, like tablets and phones is still in the works per its deal with Disney but for now viewing is strictly a computer-only thing.
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