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
Motorola was just taking advantage of early adopters....Come March 27th. the 599.00 WIFI only version will be released. This directly competes with ipad pricing. :-) I'm getting one of those babies for sure. No apple 'force fed' products for me. I like making my own choices....onelin - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Could you add some video playback battery life comparisons with the iPad? I am interested if that matches up similar to the web browsing.omidk - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Does this support caldav or exchange?Its been pretty frustrating having to rely on vendor customizations for exchange support. If google would build in caldav I think a lot of people could run stock android.
TareX - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
The browser (provided that it gets flash) is what should make people choose this as opposed to the iPad.Who needs money-draining apps when you have a PC-like browsing experience?
mlambert890 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
I really feel this is academic and minutiae to justify a predetermined position.I use the iPad every day. I am not a "fan" of anything and actually spent my entire 30s working at Microsoft - a full decade.
I can honestly say, using the iPad *every day* that there is ever a time I am cursing the browser and wishing I had a "real PC experience". Occasionally I miss flash, but the world is moving towards HTML5 anyway and rightly so.
If, on the other hand, your goal is to replicate a desktop on a tablet, and you will barely use it or use it as a complete notebook replacement for outlier cases, then you might want some of what Anand covered here.
I submit that 90% of the market for these devices do not fit in that category at all.
All odf the same BS was said about Netbooks. I remember this chatter *inside* MSFT as well. Total disconnect from what the real mass market growth space wants and needs. This is why apple continues to do so well. Apple directly serves "the sheep", as the "hardcore" like to label regular folks. Thing is... The "sheep" spend 90% of the money.
As for apps, I think ive spent maybe a total of $50 on iPad software, so your implication that somehow a fortune must be spent to supplement Safari with apps is ridiculous. Try being objective and lose any brand bias or personal use case focus and you will see this differently.
Android on phones did well by copying Apple and then spreading cheap devices across lots of carriers. Period, the end. Any side effect that appeals to geeks ("openness", Linux base, whatever) is there in spite of that success, it is not a cause.
If Google attempts to create a desktop UX on a tablet, I am almost certain they will fail to capture anything but an extremist niche.
bplewis24 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
I really feel this is academic and minutiae to justify a predetermined position.Oh, and that's me responding to your post, not a quote.
And you really just come off as an idiot or fanboy by saying that Android did well by "copying Apple and .. spreading cheap devices across a lot of carriers." That is one of the dumbest things I've ever read online that wasn't uttered by Glenn Beck.
As far as your last sentence, you keep being certain of that, just as much as you are probably certain that the rest of your post doesn't come off as irrational drivel.
Brandon
ccrobopid - Saturday, February 26, 2011 - link
> And you really just come off as an idiot or fanboy by saying that Android did> well by "copying Apple and ..
He maybe came off as an idiot (I don't think so) but I think he's right. I see people with android phones trying to use them as iPhones and ignoring the rest of the features.
I, as a tech savvy user feel ignored by tech manufacturers. It's clear to me that my tastes are not those of the majority. I have to buy 16:9 laptops for programming, if I want a tablet with a good screen I have to give up having a file system or watching content in the formats I want, etc., etc.
I wonder what would happen if we, as the workforce that make all this products for the masses possible will get on strike and refuse to work until products that appeal to us are made.
We are a minority, but I feel unfair to be ignored like any other minority by the people we work for
:D :D
bplewis24 - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
While you are correct in saying that the majority of the people who own Android phones likely don't utilize all of it's features and use them as iPhone clones, so to speak, that doesn't mean that Google has copied Apple in it's OS vision.Anand goes into detail in the first page about how Google has decided to differentiate itself with Android, and I think most tech-savvy people realize that there are some very key, significant differences with the two software platforms. Stock Android from the G1 was vastly different from iPhoneOS of that day.
While both have added significant features and ultimately will continue to copy each other's advancement or try to best it, they still go about it in different ways. For example, iOS continues to try to catch up in the multi-tasking arena, but they still do so differently.
Brandon
spinron - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
I have a Pandaboard here (a TI OMAP4 reference platform) and just for fun I loaded it with XBMC and configured it with the full suite of TI's proprietary drivers (DSP, IVA, PowerSGX, etc). It played pretty much anything I threw at it, including some very high bit rate AVC in MKV containers that put quite a strain on dedicated Sigma silicon. My guess is that the Tegra2 has comparable video decoding power, so whether Xoom-like tablets will become universal video players will essentially boil down to software availability. So strictly speaking, Kal-el-like hardware is probably not going to be required just for that purpose.Great review! It's certainly much more objective than most of the others. Walt Mossberg's review on ATD was particularly funny (and simultaneously sad) to watch.
Your mobile SB review looked so convincing it looks like my next major buy is probably going to be a new SB i7 MBP. Coupling fast I/O with a laptop seems like a real game changer, most certainly in Apple's world. Can't wait for a review...
halcyon - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Finally a tab that almost manages the 10hr mark on benchmarks.That means that in true real-world usage it might really last the 8hrs, even after the battery has been through a few recharge cycles.
The screen is bit of a let-down as you state.
Ah well, here's hoping Samsung did the right thing on their tablet.
The wait continues.