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My Quick Xoom Review

vincenz said:
If only that had all the apps available in the app store, I think it'd be a killer device. Ah if only.
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That's really the main thing holding me back. The Android platform is awesome and Honeycomb is sweet. I love the strengths of both iOS and Android, but iOS has the better App ecosystem with more of what I use and want.

iPad 2 better step it up on Wednesday.
 
cmvsm said:
You don't know how many times I'm on my HP/Windows laptop for work (I have to have it, no choice), and I've tried to swipe the touchpad and nothing happens, as I forget that this POS has no swiping capability like my magic pad on my Mac.

DITTO. I hate my work laptop with a passion. I just use my Mac and RDP into my work computer so I don't have to use the stupid non swiping touchpad. Even on newer Windows laptops. At least they have the scroll bar on the side but I dunno how many times I've tried to rotate an effin PDF before realizing I'm not on my Mac.
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Heh, I was going to come in here and ask why people hadn't just started ignoring Gryzor. I guess an admin took care of that for us.

Personally, I really, really hope that the next iPad holds a candle to the Xoom (or, heck Chrome on my desktop) in terms of browsing speed.

( I feel like I said that already. Hm.)

Regardless, it would be nice. Fast browsing, RSS feed access, and PDF viewing would be my major desires in a tablet. If Apple can speed things up on those fronts, I'll be in line.
 
gloss said:
Regardless, it would be nice. Fast browsing, RSS feed access, and PDF viewing would be my major desires in a tablet. If Apple can speed things up on those fronts, I'll be in line.
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This is another thing. PDF viewing can be done of course, but even in GoodReader, performance is very sluggish. Forget about it in iBooks.
 
BergerFan said:
The iCab browser looks just like Safari, but has proper tabs. They take up minimal space. No more than the bookmarks bar in Safari.
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iCab has unfortunately many issues with text input, especially in forums like Macrumors..
I still haven't found a great browser for the iPad. They all have to use Safari's engine, and they suffer from memory limitations imposed by the hardware.
 
petvas said:
iCab has unfortunately many issues with text input, especially in forums like Macrumors..
I still haven't found a great browser for the iPad. They all have to use Safari's engine, and they suffer from memory limitations imposed by the hardware.
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Yeah, I found that too, the cursor goes missing, and it isn't as smooth as Safari(no 3rd-party browser seems to be), which is why I keep going back to Safari. :/
 
I will say one thing that is nice about having "real" multitasking in Android is when opening the Twitter app, I don't have to wait for it to refresh as it has already been refreshing in the background.

Of course the downside is that my Nook Color's battery was dead after I left it in standby for a day. So there are still some battery life tradeoffs between the multitasking methods.

I still prefer iOS's more hands-off approach to multitasking mainly because I don't have to do anything and "it just works." It could be a little faster when switching apps though, there is a momentary pause when you switch between an app and when it becomes functional. On Android when you switch to an already running app it is pretty much ready to go.

I wonder if Bestbuy has a Xoom display set up. I might have to go check it out. I won't be buying one though, the $800 price tag is way too much for me.
 
jclardy said:
I will say one thing that is nice about having "real" multitasking in Android is when opening the Twitter app, I don't have to wait for it to refresh as it has already been refreshing in the background.

Of course the downside is that my Nook Color's battery was dead after I left it in standby for a day. So there are still some battery life tradeoffs between the multitasking methods.

I still prefer iOS's more hands-off approach to multitasking mainly because I don't have to do anything and "it just works." It could be a little faster when switching apps though, there is a momentary pause when you switch between an app and when it becomes functional. On Android when you switch to an already running app it is pretty much ready to go.

I wonder if Bestbuy has a Xoom display set up. I might have to go check it out. I won't be buying one though, the $800 price tag is way too much for me.
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The pause when switching apps is mostly because of the RAM limitations. On my iPhone 4 I barely notice any pauses.
 
jclardy said:
I will say one thing that is nice about having "real" multitasking in Android is when opening the Twitter app, I don't have to wait for it to refresh as it has already been refreshing in the background.

Of course the downside is that my Nook Color's battery was dead after I left it in standby for a day. So there are still some battery life tradeoffs between the multitasking methods.

I still prefer iOS's more hands-off approach to multitasking mainly because I don't have to do anything and "it just works." It could be a little faster when switching apps though, there is a momentary pause when you switch between an app and when it becomes functional. On Android when you switch to an already running app it is pretty much ready to go.

I wonder if Bestbuy has a Xoom display set up. I might have to go check it out. I won't be buying one though, the $800 price tag is way too much for me.
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Let's be honest here. Apple's approach doesn't work either. Multitasking isn't there yet. I can tell when my iPhone 4 or iPad is low on memory because apps don't run as well/Safari experiences way more checkerboard patterns scrolling up and down pages etc. Then I have to go close apps manually.
 
Thanks for the review. It's nice to see fairly objective reviews coming from an iPad user.

The coming tablet wars are going to be interesting, and in the end, the consumers are going to win out big time. :)
 
gloss said:
Heh, I was going to come in here and ask why people hadn't just started ignoring Gryzor. I guess an admin took care of that for us.
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I got in trouble a couple days ago for calling him out in a thread where he was being combative instead of helpful, the OP was asking a question and all he was getting were insults heh.
 
gloss said:
The guy is just impossible to have a civil conversation with.
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Gryzor makes too much money to worry about being civil. He's probably driving around in his brand new 2011 Pearl White Audi TT giving Fandroids the finger as we speak.
 
benhollberg said:
It has amazing hardware, except for being a bit heavy. Honeycomb still needs work.
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Agreed.

Fantastic hardware, feels good in the hands, very solid without feeling overly heavy.

Honeycomb, on the other hand...clunky. Just not impressed with it at all. I really, really want a viable challenger(s) to the iPad, but the initial rev of Honeycomb is lacking, compared to the Apple ecosystem.
 
I'm glad that Xoom is giving the competition that the iPad needs. Grats OP on the purchased. Now, let's wait for the iPad 2 can bring to the table. I have a feeling that I might jump ship to try the Xoom.
 
Android 3.0 Honeycomb is killer! Because it's specially designed for tablets and uh... Android is better than iOS. :rolleyes: Works perfectly with Google Accounts.
 
Another update

Power button is still annoying, but I am getting use to it.

Video capabilites are still great, even if it is a bit awkward to hold like that.

Using the Xoom at length now, it feels so much smaller than the iPad. Must have something to do with the 16:10 format vs square?

The screen seemed grainy to me at first, then I changed wall papers and now it looks excellent...

The ablility to drag and drop gmail emails into different folders is flawless.

Multitasking on this thing is a serious treat... miles ahead of Ipads task switching.

I still have yet to get a program to force close. I did however experience some slowness during some tasks last night but overall it has been rock solid.

From when I bought my Xoom yesterday morning, there was only 7 apps optimized for honeycomb. When I woke up this morning there was 15.

Will it double exponentially per day? I dont think so, but it looks promising
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; nb-no) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

It seems google went one step ahead of Apple In such a s short time. Honeycomb is beautiful. And actually Looks like it uses the screen space to something useful. Instead of having of icons. Love the Mail app, and Mapa. Love how fast the browser is and how good the notifcations system its.

It took a while. Bur honeycomb is a beautiful os.

Hope apple can step up and do something more then wallpapers, folders etc
 
henrikrox said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; nb-no) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

It seems google went one step ahead of Apple In such a s short time. Honeycomb is beautiful. And actually Looks like it uses the screen space to something useful. Instead of having of icons. Love the Mail app, and Mapa. Love how fast the browser is and how good the notifcations system its.

It took a while. Bur honeycomb is a beautiful os.

Hope apple can step up and do something more then wallpapers, folders etc
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considering it took them a full year to come up with a decent response they had to go beyond iPad 1 and even iOS 4. iPad 2 will most likely match it or beat Xoom and be iOS 5 ready which I'm also hoping to get a glimpse of.
 
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