Gadgetory

this episode of TechnoBuffalo is brought to you by netflix go to netflix.com slash buffalo for your free trial membership today what's up everyone jon rettinger from TechnoBuffalo here it's been just about four weeks since the world was introduced to the first android 3.0 honeycomb tablet the motorola xoom and in that month time the tablet world to change quite a bit we've seen the ipad to get released we've got more details on the LG G slight coming out we've got more details on HTC's flyer and there are a ton of other Android 3.0 or other tablets coming on the market so what role does the zoom have sort of in that and I thought it'd be a great time to sort of give you an update and what I fought about using the zoom for the past month as you guys decide which tablets right for you so let's go ahead and get started so the first thing I want to talk about is something that I discussed during my review and that is the build quality of the motorola xoom the build quality is absolutely outstanding Motorola did a fantastic job with the device as far as manufacturing goes it feels really solid in hand and when you're using it you've got no doubt you're using a high quality piece of hardware it's heavy without feeling bulky it's solid without being heavy if that makes any sense at all you got a whole bloody things in your hands I really feel is absolutely fantastic and I noticed that when i first used it and the more that I've gotten to familiarize myself with the zoom the more I like the way it feels sort of in that building there's something about it that I found a very very annoying and that rests right where you put your left hand on the back side the left one you've got the screen facing you and the right side when you've got it turned over and that is that lock button is incredibly annoying to have to find with your finger so when you've got the device in landscape mode it's alright you can go ahead and feel it right there with your finger go ahead lock the screen or decide to unlock the screen however when you've got the device rotated you really have to check to see which way you have it so whether or not you've got the motorola logo in the upper right or whether or not the motorola logo is going to be on the bottom left it depends on where you put your finger to find that lock button so whether you got to go to the bottom or you got to use your other hand to go back up and hit it it's been a huge annoyance with motorola xoom i wish if they were going to do a physical button that it would have been on the front of the device i would have made it a lot easier it's especially strange considering they knew that the home button was going to rotate and they used a soft button here always in the bottom left I really would have liked the zooms have had the physical button right on the front so I could always know where it was one of the big problems that I had at the zoom when I first in my review was the lack of apps meant for 3.0 tablet or android tablets in general that has since been rectified there are a ton of tablet apps available and there are a lot more coming soon let me go ahead and show you what those arts go ahead and back up here go ahead and jump back go back into market let me show you some of the great tablet apps that are now finally available for the motorola xoom so you're featured tablet apps go ahead and jump in and from what I did my initial review and there may be a handful there are now many many many more and many coming soon developers have had a chance to get their hands on the SDK now I had a chance to perfect their applications and there are just more coming on a daily basis so if you're worried about apps there certainly aren't as many as you'd have on previous two dot something versions of Android or Apple iOS but there are a lot of apps available a lot of apps that you use and loved in the past so things like Dropbox of course you've got angry birds living in here somewhere movies there's angry birds seasons Cat in the Hat you could like there are a ton of application support now that wasn't there in the past so talking about Android three-point on the home screen I know you guys were saying right there I am taking my wife I'm a good husband I am taking her to go see Lady Gaga in Las Vegas this weekend that's the kind of guy I am I didn't delete it I figured I'll leave it there so you guys could know possibly even make fun of me in the comments android 3.0 honeycomb as an operating system I found it to be a little bit cumbersome it can be difficult to navigate at times but the more you learn it I think the more you can appreciate what Android can do for you I love Android this is the same with a smartphone world it is fantastic for customization if you like to do even the slightest bit of tweaks with your operating system if you want to change icons or have interactive widgets android 3.0 does a really fantastic job if you want to get to the core the OS and you want to make big changes you've got the option to do so in a lot of these UI tweaks you can do without having to do any fancy routing you can go right to the App Store and download apps that are going to change the way you look and interact with the device that is definitely one of the pros of Android I really grown to like as well and this is one of things i mentioned in my review I loved notification system insert the growl esque icons across the bottom I think they are extremely elegant and it's just a fantastic way to view things as they pop up you can see it right there some email there's a thing to sign into an account new applications available for download they don't get in the way and they really present the information nicely I do miss the Android transfer pulls down but I've definitely gotten used to this so one of the big additions that wasn't on the zoom when it launched is flash flash 10.2 is now available let's go ahead and take a look at what that's going to look like we'll go ahead and hop on over to youtube you can see a video here of Noah topping then go ahead and push play and you can see know what talking all right let me going to push play you've got a sense to see what this looks like it's a little bit choppy as Android arts flash generally has been on Android but it's very very watchable whether that's a combination of flash 10.2 or the really impressive hardware the Tegra 2 and the gig of ram that are in here i'm not sure but you can definitely watch full screen flash without any difficulty this is probably one of the best mobile implementations of flash that's currently available on the market when you hear flash and the next thing you're thinking of is hulu will you be able to watch hulu content unfortunately the answer is no you can view the hula website but you can't view the content let's go and take a look at the web browser this is still one of the best implementations of tab browsing that I've seen available and this is of course an android 3.0 they not unique to the zoom but the problems that i had when i first used the device are still there you notice it's not as fast i like it to be take some time for the content to show up and this is over a relatively fast Wi-Fi network i think this is a typical instance of the software not being fully optimized yet for the hardware the hardware that's in here is i just mentioned the Tegra 2 in the gig of ram are extremely impressive this thing is as fast as laptops from not even a few years ago or at least should be in theory as we see new updates to android 3.0 a 3.0 one or whatever they decide to call it i think we're going to see the core operating system take more advantage of the hardware so motorola motorola xoom in android 3-pointers whole is resting a lot on the potential of what it can be it can be that lightning fast platform you can offer fully robust flash content it can offer smooth pinch-to-zoom but it's just not there you see the time that it takes to load there's a lot still based on promise of what this can do and the fact is that what it's doing right now it's not delivering that optimal experience I'm really excited about what honeycomb can potentially bring and this has nothing to do with preference towards operating system whether its iOS android or webos coming soon for the touchpad this is just how it interacts with the zoom and it is very slow that's not to say that it's going to be true with other Android devices it's just not as fast as other tablets out there and again I think it's just the case of the software not being fully optimized for the hardware unfortunately let's go ahead and jump back home so those are some like quick impressions of the motorola xoom android 3.0 honeycomb I love the interactive which is here I think it's fantastic way to interact with your content I love being able to scroll through and see things in a dynamic way I love the customization options that I have with the zoom and there are certainly a lot here if you're looking to get a tablet and you sway the Android way your cross shopping with the ipad to still give the zoom a very very solid look it offers high end features it gives you the customization of Android just know that you're not going to be getting the lightening fast speeds that you'd expect from the Tegra 2 if this was a slower last generation snapdragon chip that was processing this i'd say it's probably relatively fast but considering what Tegra 2 it's capable of and what the rest of the hardware engineer can do just not as fast as it should be but i think in the next few months we're definitely going to get there and hopefully we'll see 4G being added to the motorola xoom as well currently out of the box it does not support Verizon's 4G network it is going to have to allegedly be sent back to get that 4g upgrade something to keep in mind you might want to wait until you can pick up a 4g motorola xoom or even the Wi-Fi only version coming out very soon so what do you guys think do you agree disagree did I get a little rambling on you very curious to what you know what you guys say sound off in the comments I'd like to thank our sponsors at Netflix for the support be sure to check out netflix.com slash Buffalo for your free trial membership and if you want to watch a ton of really awesome TV and movie content be sure to check out netflix on your gaming console of choice xbox 360 ps3 or wii to go ahead and get your stream on i'm jon rettinger from TechnoBuffalo see in the next video