The Motorola Xoom is the first device to use Google's new Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system. Here's a look at some of the best elements of the new OS.
Since previous versions of Android were designed for 3- to 4-inch lower-resolution displays, anytime a manufacturer tried to use the OS on larger, higher-res displays, there was often screen blank space. Android 3.0 uses every inch of the Motorola Xoom's 10.1-inch 1280-by-800-pixel display—on the home screen, each corner of the OS has some action:
The top left is a shortcut to dedicated Google and Voice commands. The top right takes you to your Apps and home-screen customization menu. Bottom left is the multitask button which shows you everything running—this is a nice addition, there's nothing like this in Android 2.3. The bottom right is the notification area—popups appear here (new e-mails, IMs, new apps installs, etc.). The notification area is like the pulldown notification tray in previous version of Android.
The new widgets in Android 3.0 are very noteworthy, and they're much more useful on a larger screen. For instance, the Gmail widget is terrific, you can scroll through the subject lines of your messages without actually entering the mail app. The new Gmail app takes cues from the iPad mail app, you scroll through your subject lines in the left pane while the right pane displays the body of the email.
The new Google Talk app offers video chat—it's basically Google's answer to Apple's FaceTime. It's long overdue for Android and it works quite well. Check out what Google Talk can do in our video walkthrough.
The last app that really stands out is the new Web browser—but there's good and bad. Like previous Android versions, you can zoom in to enlarge the text to a comfortable size and then double tap to make it fit within the screen, which is useful. Google has also added tabbed browsing so it feels like a desktop-class browser. Now for the bad: Flash is promised on the Xoom, but it isn't ready at launch. This is disappointing, especially considering Flash for Android 2.3 is out there, and it works well (when used on a powerful-enough Android phone, of course). The other big browser problem: Most sites default to the stripped-down mobile version. You can navigate to the full site by simply clicking on a link at the bottom of most pages, but the iPad goes to the full site by default. If this browser gets Flash support and defaults to full sites, it could truly compete with the iPad's browser, but right now it just can't.
Hit the slideshow for a closer look at Honeycomb and some of its flagship apps.