Motorola Xoom Review: The First Honeycomb Tablet Arrives

Old & New Apps on Honeycomb

As we mentioned in our overview of Android 3.0, there are a number of features that Honeycomb specific apps are going to be able to take advantage of. For example the dual-pane view that we see in the Honeycomb email apps - we’ll see more of that in future Honeycomb apps similar to what we saw happen with iPad specific apps. We’ll also see developers use contextual action menus.

Existing Android apps should just work on Honeycomb (although some definitely have issues). Google runs these older apps by default full screen, just scaled up to fit the higher resolution of the Xoom.

The fourth button for backwards compatibility: menu

You’ll remember that Honeycomb does away with the menu button, however older Android apps are expecting it to be there. In these situations you’ll see a fourth button added to the lower left of the screen: a virtual menu button.

It’s Crashy

At MWC earlier this month I noted that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 running Honeycomb seemed to be unusually unstable. Given that the first tablet running the OS would be shipping in a matter of weeks I just assumed that it was due to Samsung not having access to the latest build of Honeycomb. After all, Motorola is Google’s device partner this time around.

After using the Xoom for the past couple of days I can say that while the experience isn’t horrible by any means, Honeycomb isn’t anywhere near as stable as Froyo on the Atrix 4G. I’ve had many application crashes in both older Android apps and native Honeycomb apps. For a while there I couldn’t get the Android Twitter app to work at all, even after a reboot.

As I mentioned, it’s not just third party apps. The Honeycomb Browser, camera app and even Marketplace have all crashed on me over the past two days.

There’s also no microSD support in Honeycomb yet, it’ll be added via a forthcoming OS update. And there are many bugs sprinkled throughout the OS (background data automatically enables itself after a reboot even if you disable it). Things like this combined with the instability I mentioned earlier makes me feel like Honeycomb was a bit rushed, perhaps to hit the streets before one other major tablet announcement coming this year?