Motorola

Feb

Motorola XOOM Gets A Teardown, 4G LTE Chip Upgrade Takes 10 Minutes, Not 6 Days

Posted by David Ruddock in Motorola, News, Verizon Wireless, XOOM

The good folks over at iFixit gave the Motorola XOOM a teardown this morning, and aside from the ridiculous 57 screws holding it together, it has been deemed pretty tinker-friendly, scoring an 8/10 on the repairability meter.

One interesting piece of information did emerge during the XOOM's disrobing, though - in regard to its much-touched LTE upgradeability. The teardown's author noted that the XOOM ships with a dummy mini-PCI board, presumably holding the 4G LTE radio's slot. What's so fascinating about that? Well, the author claims a seasoned technician could swap out the dummy card and close up in about 10 minutes.

Feb

CNN Releases Android App Made Specifically For Honeycomb Tablets

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

If you remember, during Google's Honeycomb showcase in the beginning of the month, one of the tablet-optimized apps demoed was made by CNN. Considering CNN is one of the Honeycomb/XOOM launch partners, the new app showed up in the Market like clockwork for an easily digestible price of free. For those who need a refresher, here's the video from the presentation again:

The CNN app features a swipable navigation bar on the left-hand side and a grid story layout on the right side. For video junkies, live video broadcasts as well as pre-recorded video segments are provided. Vocal activists among you will find the ability to leave comments satisfying.

Feb

Motorola XOOM Review Roundup: An Android Tablet, Done (Mostly) Right

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, Motorola, News, Verizon Wireless, XOOM

It's launch day for the XOOM, and already the major news outlets have had a chance to spend a few days with the much anticipated device. Not only does the XOOM bring a new standard in high-end to the masses (a la Tegra 2), but it's also the first device to ship with Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) on board. It's also really the second major Android tablet to launch (the Galaxy Tab being the first), and the first to match the 10" form factor of the iPad. But how does it fare? Let's take a look at what our reviewers thought.

Feb

Trademark Research Fail Or Balls Of Steel? ChaCha Suing HTC For Trademark Infringement While Xoom Corp Is Going After Motorola

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Chacha, HTC, Motorola, News, XOOM

You would think that large hardware manufacturers, such as HTC and Motorola, would dedicate at least a few hours to trademark searches before naming their products and investing millions of dollars into promotional efforts for said products. That would be a fair assumption, right? It seems like the answer sometimes is: not exactly.

HTC ChaCha

Last week at MWC, HTC unveiled 6 new devices, one of which was bearing the name ChaCha (that's one of the Facebook phones). Unsurprisingly, exactly a week later, on February 22nd, ChaCha Search Inc, which owns the trademark ChaCha in the U.S. and Europe, filed a trademark infringement suit against HTC America.

Feb

Motorola XOOM System Dump Now Available To Download

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, Mods, Motorola, News, Verizon Wireless, XOOM

This one's for you, developers: XDA user adub007 just posted a full Motorola XOOM system dump. What new and unprecedented goodies does it contain? That remains to be seen... feel free to download the 112MB (183MB when unpacked) file and start digging for yourself.

Android Police mirror

Source: XDA-Developers via Droid Life

Feb

Honeycomb Wallpapers Ripped Out Of SDK, Now Available To Download

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, Mods, News

Turns out yesterday's update to the Android 3.0 SDK introduced more than just finalized APIs - the folks over at Android Central have discovered seven completely new wallpapers as well as two higher-res versions of existing ones in the final SDK's Launcher2.apk.

At 1920x1280, the images are just the right size for showing off your Honeycomb love on any of your devices. If they catch your eye, be sure to grab them for yourself using the download link below.

Download Link

Source: Android Central Forums via Android Central

Feb

Costco Now Selling The Atrix 4G For $119.99 With A Free Accessory Bundle On A 2-Year Contract [Internal Scans]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in AT&T, Atrix 4G (Olympus), Deals, Motorola, News

Even though we thought Costco would be selling the Motorola Atrix 4G for AT&T for $149.99, the mega-warehouse decided to sweeten the deal a bit and dropped the price to $119.99 on a 2-year contract (this includes customers upgrading their existing AT&T phones too).

And that's not all - according to our tipster, whose track record has so far been spotless, Costco will be throwing in a free accessory bundle consisting of a case, a car charger, and a wired earpiece. After about $15 in taxes, this deal is just as hot, if not hotter, than Amazon's, but benefits from Costco's top notch customer service and warranty.

Feb

This Changes Everything: Motorola XOOM's Bootloader Will Be "Unlockable/Relockable"

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Mods, Motorola, News, Verizon Wireless, XOOM

Sure, the first part of that title might sound like a Steve Jobs quote, but Motorola's latest tweet merits the expression:

That's right - unlike almost all other Motorola devices in recent memory, the XOOM will ship with an unlocked (or at least "unlockable/relockable") bootloader. That means modders will be free to create custom ROMs and kernels for the tablet - not as surprising as it would be were the XOOM not a flagship Google device, but still very reassuring.

Now, Motorola, about your other devices' bootloaders...

Source: Motorola (Twitter)

Feb

Wirefly Unboxes Motorola XOOM: "The Next Generation In Tablet"

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Motorola, News, Verizon Wireless, XOOM

OK, so unboxings aren't exactly the most exciting videos on the web, but when they involve a certain tablet called the "Motorola XOOM," they're definitely worth a look. Such is Wirefly's latest creation:

Items of note:

Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) - boot times seem really fast
10.1-inch 16:10 display - larger than an iPad
1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor
32GB of internal storage
2MP front camera
5MP rear camera capable of recording 720p HD video

Interestingly, the video mentions a slot for a 4G SIM card, which is odd since Verizon and Motorola say the XOOM will require a ~~hardware~~ software upgrade to connect to LTE.

Feb

AT&T's Motorola Atrix 4G Now On Sale - $149.99 At RadioShack And Amazon, $129.99 At Walmart

Posted by Abhiroop Basu in AT&T, Atrix 4G (Olympus), Motorola, News

AT&T has officially started selling the Motorola Atrix 4G for $199.99 with a 2-year contract.

Additionally, true to its word, RadioShack has also started offering the Android 2.2 smartphone for $149.99. The dock will set you back a further $329.99 when bought with the phone or $479.99 when purchased separately.

_{The advertisement for the Atrix 4G on the RadioShack website.}

Not to be outdone, Amazon has the device for $149.99. The phone and dock can be purchased as a bundle for $499.99 (after a $100 mail-in rebate and purchase of the Data Pro 2GB/4GB plan with tethering), while the dock on its own costs $499.99.