Motorola has unveiled the successor to its widely publicized but not-so-widely purchased Xoom Android tablet.
The Xoom made waves earlier this year as the arguably most powerful tablet on the market, and the first to promise support for Verizon’s best-in-class 4G LTE mobile data network. However, it failed to trigger significant enough sales to be the iPad killer it had hoped to be.
Nevertheless, due to an aggressive marketing campaign and positive reviews, the Xoom is growing name recognition and Motorola is ready to enter the next chapter.
The Xoom 2 will be available in both a 10.1-inch model, a direct competitor to the size of the iPad, as well as a market-differentiating 8.2-inch model.
Under the hood, both versions are largely the same. Each has a 1.2 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, and 16 GB of internal memory. They both have a 5-megapixel rear-facing and 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera.
They’re also significantly slimmer than the original Xoom. At 8.8 millimeters, they’re nearly a third less bulky.
The question now remains if the Xoom 2 will be able to make a bigger splash in the market, especially considering the $199 Amazon Kindle Fire is likely to become the Android tablet that everyone starts talking about. It’s time to wait and see.
