Motorola XOOM and Android 3.0 – can you believe the hype?

The Motorola XOOM promises to be the first tablet to challenge Apple’s dominance in the tabloid market – with the hype around it growing by the day.

To add to the feeding frenzy, T3 have done a review of the Motorola XOOM’s operating system Android 3.0, aka Honeycomb.

Google’s Engineering Manager Dave Burke gave the tech site and magazine a breakdown of what users can expect, allowing us to start to assess if the tablet deserves the iPad killer hype.

First up, is user experience and the Motorola XOOM is promising in this department. Three virtual controls will replace hardware buttons, a micro SD slot will allow firmware updates in the future and the browser will be more like a desktop with tabs that can be easily accessed and quickly opened.

Voice recognition will make it easier to use the tablet in the background as you carry out other tasks, for example you could tell the XOOM to play a certain song or to send a text or email.

And Gmail will also get a slight makeover with two windows running to display mailboxes on one and message on the other. Users will also be offered commands dependent on the messages that are opened.

The XOOM also promises to provide an excellent multi-media experience with Android 3.0.

YouTube will have a 3D-like wall of thumbnails to be scrolled, with videos playing in a corner if you wish to use your main screen for something else.

Users will also get access to Google Books, a cloud-based service with over three million titles available.

Google Maps 5.0 will gets it tablet debut on the XOOM – with the latest version promising to be even more user friendly and faster, with 3D building information from 100 cities.

Let us know if you think the XOOM can shake up the tablet market using the comments box below.

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