If this past year has been considered the year of the tablet, the coming year seems to be even more so. Verizon has now introduced two brand new 4G LTE Android tablets in the market, just as promised. Originally the Motorola Xoom 2 tablets, they are now rebranded as Verizon Droid Xyboard tablets. Pretty strange name, huh? But we may just remember the name because it is so unique!
Initial Impressions of the Xyboard Tablets
There are currently two version of Xyboard, an 8.2” tablet and a 10” one too. Thinner than the original Xoom and more angular-looking, that is, more in line with the Droid RAZR, both the tablets are powered by a 1.2 dual-core processor, run Android 3.0 Honeycomb and come with 1GB RAM each. They are also equipped with the LTE radio, which is an added plus.
These tablets were released quietly, without much ado, just about the time the Kindle Fire came out into the market, also just before the entry of the Asus Transformer Prime.
Though they look stylish, the power and volume buttons are situated at the back. This feels really strange for a user. The other problem is the rather steep price of the tablets. Of course, LTE adds to the pricing factor, but still, we thought it was rather highly priced. On contract, the pricing starts at $429. An additional charge of $30 per month is levied on this plan, which makes the total seem really expensive.
Right now, there is no Wi-Fi version. Maybe that would bring down the price a tad bit. We are also hoping that the Xyboard would offer Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich at a future date. That would make the tablets such a pleasure to own..
No comments:
Post a Comment