Hasta La Gadget!

LAS VEGAS — After months of sneak peeks and speculation, Motorola has finally unveiled its iPad competitor. Accompanying the tablet, the company introduced the latest version of its popular Droid smartphone.

Dubbed the Xoom, the tablet will indeed be running Honeycomb, the OS described by Motorola as the first version of Android designed entirely for use on a tablet.

Unfortunately, a fully-functional Xoom wasn’t made available for playing around with, but the short demo played onstage at Wednesday’s press conference gave audience members something to think about. From what we’ve seen, Honeycomb’s user interface is very sexy, and very different from the Gingerbread UI we’re used to.

Although price points weren’t disclosed, the details that were shared made the Xoom a tablet worth watching. It boasts a dual-core 1-GHz processor, 10.1-inch widescreen HD display, a 2-megapixel front facing camera for video chat capability and a rear-facing 5-megapixel camera, which captures 720p HD video.

The Xoom will launch with 3-G and WiFi connectivity in the first quarter of 2011. In the second quarter, it will be available for the next-generation 4G LTE network  Fret not, early adopters – those that buy early can upgrade the tablet to 4G later.

Motorola did not announce an official release date or price.

Also noteworthy was the latest addition in Motorola’s Droid series, the Droid Bionic. The Bionic has a 4.3-inch screen, a dual-core processor under the hood (like the Xoom), and  512 MB of RAM. It will be compatible with Verizon’s new 4G network.

The Droid Bionic joins the earlier announced Motorola Atrix and LG Optimus 2x, two other smartphones with dual-core CPUs.

Brian Chen contributed to this report.

Motorola has just outed its delicious Honeycomb tablet alongside another device, the LTE-equipped Bionic, on its official site. The company’s CES press conference is ongoing right now, where the Xoom will presumably get its proper announcement. All we know so far is that this slate is headed to Verizon, the press release is still somewhere in the hidden parts of the internet. More soon!

Update: The PR and full spec sheet are now embedded after the break. A 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 will power this 10.1-incher, while 4G connectivity will be made available as an update in Q2 following a Q1 launch. Other specs include a 1280 x 800 resolution, 5 megapixel camera, 720p video recording and 1080p video playback, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, and finally, a healthy 32GB of onboard storage. The battery is rated to be capable of supporting 10 hours of video. Be still, our beating hearts!

[Thanks, Pratik]

Continue reading Motorola Xoom becomes official, headed to Verizon in Q1, upgradeable to 4G in Q2

Motorola Xoom becomes official, headed to Verizon in Q1, upgradeable to 4G in Q2 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Jan 2011 19:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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