Motorola Xoom Review: The First Honeycomb Tablet Arrives
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 23, 2011 11:57 PM ESTThe Android Tablet Keyboard
In our iPad review I complained that Apple purposefully turned down the autocorrect aggressiveness, which resulted in a more frustrating typing experience than on the iPhone. Google clearly struggled with the same decision, but left the option up to the end user to configure. There’s a new option in the input device settings to set how aggressive you want the autocorrect to be:
The main difference between moderate and aggressive seems to boil down to spatial recognition for typing errors. On Android and iOS the keyboard looks at the length of the word you’re typing, letters involved as well as the location of the letters selected when comparing to the built in dictionary. In my experience, Android tends to look more at word length and letters involved than it does the physical location of the keys you’re pressing. I’m not actually sure how much Android does the latter, but iOS seems to rely on it pretty heavily. Setting Honeycomb’s autocorrect to aggressive makes the Android keyboard behave a lot more like the iOS keyboard in this regard.
The main issue with aggressive autocorrect is when you’re intentionally typing a word that’s not in the dictionary. Aggressive autocorrect will typically correct it while moderate autocorrect won’t. I’ll give you an ironic example: the name Xoom.
With autocorrect set to moderate, Honeycomb will let you type Xoom without complaining. Set to aggressive, Honeycomb will look at the location of the letter X on the keyboard, realize it is close to the letter Z and assume you meant to type Zoom.
At the same time, where aggressive autocorrect comes in handy is when you actually make a spelling mistake due to a misplaced tap. Take the word "pool". If you accidentally type "pook", moderate autocorrect won’t do anything to the word. It’ll realize it’s not in the dictionary but it is not a blatantly misspelled version of another word. Aggressive autocorrect will realize that the letter k is next to the letter l on the keyboard, assume you meant “pool” and make the substitution.
Google also lets you disable autocorrect entirely but I’m not personally a fan. I’m torn as to what method I prefer on a tablet. Both can be frustrating at times but for different reasons. I feel like aggressive autocorrect is the best option if you have a mature dictionary to check against. By mature I don’t mean that it contains words of mature content, but rather it knows all of the words that you type frequently.
By default, Honeycomb takes a simplistic approach to autocorrection: the suggested words bar is hidden. Unfortunately this means there’s no quick and easy way to manually add words to the dictionary. Thankfully Google lets you show the suggestion bar all the time if you’d like, or only when in portrait mode if that tickles your fancy. Based on what I’ve seen I’d recommend using aggressive auto correct once you’ve added a significant number of words to the dictionary.
The virtual keyboard itself is pretty nice. Key spacing is good both in portrait and landscape modes and the learning curve isn’t too steep. It’s still faster (and less painful) to type on a physical keyboard, but for banging out short messages, emails and URLs - the virtual keyboard works.
My only real complaint about the virtual keyboard is the location of punctuation keys. Google gives you access to commonly used punctuation (comma, question mark, exclamation point) without switching keyboard modes, but the position of the punctuation keys takes some getting used to - they don’t cleanly map to where you’d find them on a normal QWERTY keyboard. I feel like for first time users Apple got the layout a little better, but the point is moot - as long as you don’t go back and forth between an iPad and a Xoom you’ll get used to it.
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GotThumbs - Friday, March 18, 2011 - link
The platform is not that old. Apple just took their existing ois from the itouch and made it bigger. This is a whole new ballgame. Early adopters should understand their will be some hiccups...Glad to hear the WIFI only version is coming out March 27th for 599.00 This brings the competition directly to ipad and ipad2. My boss offered to buy me the ipad2 and I told him I only want an ADAM or a Xoom. An ipad would be a waste of money....I need a business tablet. Not one whose product is so proprietary...that you can't even load an app unless its through their store....how controlling is that?
Thermogenic - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Samsung changed some of the basic internals of the system (I believe mainly to do with the filesystem and location of certain files). This makes it harder on them to release updates and also causes compatibility problems with certain applications.For me, I would only stick to the high end HTC and Motorola phones - they have the proven track record of updates. If you really want the latest and greatest for some reason, then you will want the Nexus line of phones.
ph00ny - Monday, March 7, 2011 - link
Not entirely true. Most custom froyo roms were based on galaxy s from overseas. Look at captivate, AT&T's froyo update just came out and the same phone offered through canadian carrier had froyo for quite some time nowchocks - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
"Android however did it the simplest way possible: tap home and run what you want to run next." Pre-Honeycomb Android has press-and-hold on the Home button which brings up a list of recently-used apps and can be used to switch between running tasks. Has had this since the first release I think.Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Woops, you're right :) That's very much a precursor to what Google did in Honeycomb, and tap-and-hold home is now out.Updated!
Take care,
Anand
Thermogenic - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
It's not a true tablet, but the NOOKcolor is a nice device for the money. If you are willing to do a little dirty work (mainly writing to a microsd card and booting it - very easy), you get a very basic tablet with a very nice screen for $250.I imagine for most users who use their tablet for web browsing, facebook, twitter, and youtube, that's plenty and a great bargain.
I guarantee there will be a usable version of Honeycomb running on it within six weeks. There is already a functional version, although with a decided lack of applications and very unoptimized.
wumpus - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
I can't imagine anyone else competing with a wifi only tablet. My guess is that there are two reasons to avoid releasing such: First, you can overcharge and let the consumer pay the subsidy (and then some) back to the carrier. Second: nobody tries to compare it to the nook.Enormously Hatworthy - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
I read so many of those tech blogs that sometimes I forget what a real review looks like. Good work.Some of those benchmark results are pretty odd.
I wonder if the disparity between the Optimus 2X and the Xoom might in some way be related to the dual-core support in Honeycomb? The optimus is running on 2.2 which I understand has limited (if any) support for multiple cores.
Maybe the benchmark apps are showing some measure of incompatibility with the new code? Just a wild guess.
cj100570 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Just once I'd like to read a review of any piece of mobile tech where the reviewer stuck to reviewing the hardware in his/her hands instead of constantly comparing it to an Apple product. For Christs sake, enough is enough already! And don't give me that "Apple Set The Bar" BS. I'm not buying what you're selling! I've owned 3 generations of iPhones, an iMac, and 2 MacBooks so I'm very familiar with Apple products and I have great respect for them. But the simple fact of the matter is that not everyone wants to live the iOS/OS X lifestyle and when they read a review of non Apple products I'm quite sure they don't want to see Apple brought up every other sentence.Enormously Hatworthy - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
It is annoying but whether we like iOS/iPad or not (and I don't, to be honest) it is the market leader in tablets right now. It's the frame of reference for buyers.I think they'd be doing their readers a disservice if they didn't make the comparison.
Notice that in laptop/desktop reviews you'll see scarcely a mention of Apple products (unless they're talking about size and weight).