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Ice Cream Sandwich available at SE Xperia smartphone at 2012 ! model available are Xperia™ arc and arc S, Xperia™ PLAY, Xperia™ neo and neo V, Xperia™ mini and mini pro, Xperia™ pro, Xperia™ active, Xperia™ ray as well as Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman™


As previously communicated we will update the entire 2011 Xperia portfolio* to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) as part of our next software upgrade. Our developers are now busy merging our current Xperia™ software with the new features in Android 4.0 
With the holiday season around the corner, we’re happy to confirm that the first 2011 Xperia™ smartphones will be upgraded to Android 4.0 starting from end March/early April 2012. The first smartphones to get the upgrade are Xperia™ arc S, Xperia™ neo V and Xperia™ ray. Soon after, starting from end April/early May, Xperia™ arc, Xperia™ PLAY, Xperia™ neo, Xperia™ mini and mini pro, Xperia™ pro, Xperia™ active as well as Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman™ will get their upgrades.  
This will be a phased roll out over several weeks and all kits for a specific phone model will not get the upgrade at the same time. For more information about what’s going on during the process of an Android software upgrade, please check out this blog post  from our Developer World team. It gives a comprehensive overview of the steps we need to take to ensure great software qualityonce it reaches the phone in your hand. Below is a summary of the process:
  • It starts with public push when we as a manufacturer get access to the new Android release from Google
  • Our developers take the existing Xperia™ software and combine it with the new Android release
  • Once the coding is done we want to make sure the quality of the new software meets our, our partners and your expectations
  • Now we feel the new software is ready but we also need to make sure it’s approved by our external partners
  • All good. We’re all set to roll-out the new software. The story continues in your Xperia™ smartphone
As you can see, there are many steps involved and it’s a comprehensive upgrade in terms of number of products. 
So, how do you know when the new software is available for your Xperia™ smartphone?

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich available now ! Review and feature of android Ice Cream Sandwich..


Great news for Android lovers: more new flavors are available. But only if you have the right cone, as it were. The GSM / UMTS version of the Nexus S will begin seeing Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) hit starting today, and rolling out across the board during the next few months. The Sprint version of the device, using a CDMA / WiMAX radio, isn't included in the opening round. Hackers have already discovered a way to inject Android 4.0.3 onto any Nexus S, but as always, we'd advise you to wait for the real-deal if you value your sanity. v4.0.3 is also going out to developers, with a new of enhancements and bug fixes to boot. The company plans to make that build the one to shop to partners going forward, and it should hit phones and tablets at large "in the coming months."

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Introducing Android 4.0

Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is the latest version of the Android platform for phones, tablets, and more. It builds on the things people love most about Android — easy multitasking, rich notifications, customizable home screens, resizable widgets, and deep interactivity — and adds powerful new ways of communicating and sharing.
Simple, Beautiful, Useful
Refined, evolved UI
Focused on bringing the power of Android to the surface, Android 4.0 makes common actions more visible and lets you navigate with simple, intuitive gestures. Refined animations and feedback throughout the system make interactions engaging and interesting. An entirely new typeface optimized for high-resolution screens improves readability and brings a polished, modern feel to the user interface.
Virtual buttons in the System Bar let you navigate instantly to Back, Home, and Recent Apps. The System Bar and virtual buttons are present across all apps, but can be dimmed by applications for full-screen viewing. You can access each application's contextual options in the Action Bar, displayed at the top (and sometimes also at the bottom) of the screen.
Multitasking is a key strength of Android and it's made even easier and more visual on Android 4.0. The Recent Apps button lets you jump instantly from one task to another using the list in the System Bar. The list pops up to show thumbnail images of apps used recently — tapping a thumbnail switches to the app.
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The Recent Apps list makes multitasking simple.
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Jump to the camera or see notifications without unlocking.
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For incoming calls, you can respond instantly by text.
Rich and interactive notifications let you keep in constant touch with incoming messages, play music tracks, see real-time updates from apps, and much more. On smaller-screen devices, notifications appear at the top of the screen, while on larger-screen devices they appear in the System Bar.
Home screen folders and favorites tray
New home screen folders offer a new way for you to group your apps and shortcuts logically, just by dragging one onto another. Also, in All Apps launcher, you can now simply drag an app to get information about it or immediately uninstall it, or disable a pre-installed app.
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The All Apps launcher (left) and resizable widgets (right) give you apps and rich content from the home screen.
On smaller-screen devices, the home screen now includes a customizable favorites tray visible from all home screens. You can drag apps, shortcuts, folders, and other priority items in or out of the favorites tray for instant access from any home screen.
Resizable widgets
Home screens in Android 4.0 are designed to be content-rich and customizable. You can do much more than add shortcuts — you can embed live application content directly through interactive widgets. Widgets let you check email, flip through a calendar, play music, check social streams, and more — right from the home screen, without having to launch apps. Widgets are resizable, so you can expand them to show more content or shrink them to save space.
New lock screen actions
The lock screens now let you do more without unlocking. From the slide lock screen, you can jump directly to the camera for a picture or pull down the notifications window to check for messages. When listening to music, you can even manage music tracks and see album art.
Quick responses for incoming calls
When an incoming call arrives, you can now quickly respond by text message, without needing to pick up the call or unlock the device. On the incoming call screen, you simply slide a control to see a list of text responses and then tap to send and end the call. You can add your own responses and manage the list from the Settings app.
Swipe to dismiss notifications, tasks, and browser tabs
Android 4.0 makes managing notifications, recent apps, and browser tabs even easier. You can now dismiss individual notifications, apps from the Recent Apps list, and browser tabs with a simple swipe of a finger.
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A spell-checker lets you find errors and fix them faster.
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A powerful voice input engine lets you dictate continuously.
Improved text input and spell-checking
The soft keyboard in Android 4.0 makes text input even faster and more accurate. Error correction and word suggestion are improved through a new set of default dictionaries and more accurate heuristics for handling cases such as double-typed characters, skipped letters, and omitted spaces. Word suggestion is also improved and the suggestion strip is simplified to show only three words at a time.
To fix misspelled words more easily, Android 4.0 adds a spell-checker that locates and underlines errors and suggests replacement words. With one tap, you can choose from multiple spelling suggestions, delete a word, or add it to the dictionary. You can even tap to see replacement suggestions for words that are spelled correctly. For specialized features or additional languages, you can now download and install third-party dictionaries, spell-checkers, and other text services.
Powerful voice input engine
Android 4.0 introduces a powerful new voice input engine that offers a continuous "open microphone" experience and streaming voice recognition. The new voice input engine lets you dictate the text you want, for as long as you want, using the language you want. You can speak continously for a prolonged time, even pausing for intervals if needed, and dictate punctuation to create correct sentences. As the voice input engine enters text, it underlines possible dictation errors in gray. After dictating, you can tap the underlined words to quickly replace them from a list of suggestions.
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Data usage controls let you monitor total usage by network type and application and then set limits if needed.
Control over network data
Mobile devices can make extensive use of network data for streaming content, synchronizing data, downloading apps, and more. To meet the needs of you with tiered or metered data plans, Android 4.0 adds new controls for managing network data usage.
In the Settings app, colorful charts show the total data usage on each network type (mobile or Wi-Fi), as well as amount of data used by each running application. Based on your data plan, you can optionally set warning levels or hard limits on data usage or disable mobile data altogether. You can also manage the background data used by individual applications as needed.
Designed for accessibility
A variety of new features greatly enhance the accessibility of Android 4.0 for blind or visually impaired users. Most important is a new explore-by-touch mode that lets you navigate without having to see the screen. Touching the screen once triggers audible feedback that identifies the UI component below; a second touch in the same component activates it with a full touch event. The new mode is especially important to support users on new devices that use virtual buttons in the System Bar, rather than dedicated hardware buttons or trackballs. Also, standard apps are updated to offer an improved accessibility experience. The Browser supports a script-based screen reader for reading favorite web content and navigating sites. For improved readability, you can also increase the default font size used across the system.
The accessibility experience begins at first setup — a simple touch gesture during setup (clockwise square from upper left) activates all accessibility features and loads a setup tutorial. Once accessibility features are active, everything visible on the screen can be spoken aloud by the standard screen reader.
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Contacts and profiles are integrated across apps and social networks, for a consistent, personal experience everywhere — from incoming calls to emails.
Communication and sharing
People and profiles
Throughout the system, your social groups, profiles, and contacts are linked together and integrated for easy accessibility. At the center is a new People app that offers richer profile information, including a large profile picture, phone numbers, addresses and accounts, status updates, events, and a new button for connecting on integrated social networks.
Your contact information is stored in a new "Me" profile, allowing easier sharing with apps and people. All of your integrated contacts are displayed in an easy to manage list, including controls over which contacts are shown from any integrated account or social network. Wherever you navigate across the system, tapping a profile photo displays Quick Contacts, with large profile pictures, shortcuts to phone numbers, text messaging, and more.
Unified calendar, visual voicemail
To help organize appointments and events, an updated Calendar app brings together personal, work, school, and social agendas. With user permission, other applications can contribute events to the calendar and manage reminders, for an integrated view across multiple calendar providers. The app is redesigned to let you manage events more easily. Calendars are color-coded and you can swipe left or right to change dates and pinch to zoom in or out agendas.
In the phone app, a new visual voicemail features integrates incoming messages, voice transcriptions, and audio files from one or more providers. Third-party applications can integrate with the Phone app to add your own voice messages, transcriptions, and more to the visual voicemail inbox.
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Capture the picture you want, edit, and share instantly.
Rich and versatile camera capabilities
The Camera app includes many new features that let you capture special moments with great photos and videos. After capturing images, you can edit and share them easily with friends.
When taking pictures, continuous focus, zero shutter lag exposure, and decreased shot-to-shot speed help capture clear, precise images. Stabilized image zoom lets you compose photos and video in the way you want, including while video is recording. For new flexibility and convenience while shooting video, you can now take snapshots at full video resolution just by tapping the screen as video continues to record.
To make it easier to take great pictures of people, built-in face detection locates faces in the frame and automatically sets focus. For more control, you can tap to focus anywhere in the preview image.
For capturing larger scenes, the Camera introduces a single-motion panorama mode. In this mode, you start an exposure and then slowly turn the Camera to encompass as wide a perspective as needed. The Camera assembles the full range of continuous imagery into a single panoramic photo.
After taking a picture or video, you can quickly share it by email, text message, bluetooth, social networks, and more, just by tapping the thumbnail in the camera controls.
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A Photo Gallery widget on the home screen.
Redesigned Gallery app with photo editor
The Gallery app now makes it easier to manage, show, and share photos and videos. For managing collections, a redesigned album layout shows many more albums and offers larger thumbnails. There are many ways to sort albums, including by time, location, people, and tags. To help pictures look their best, the Gallery now includes a powerful photo editor. You can crop and rotate pictures, set levels, remove red eyes, add effects, and much more. After retouching, you can select one or multiple pictures or videos to share instantly over email, text messaging, bluetooth, social networks, or other apps.
An improved Picture Gallery widget lets you look at pictures directly on the home screen. The widget can display pictures from a selected album, shuffle pictures from all albums, or show a single image. After adding the widget to the home screen, you can flick through the photo stacks to locate the image you want, then tap to load it in Gallery.
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Live Effects let you change backgrounds and use Silly Faces during video.
Live Effects for transforming video
Live Effects is a collection of graphical transformations that add interest and fun to videos captured in the Camera app. For example, you can change the background behind them to any stock or custom image, for just the right setting when shooting video. Also available for video is Silly Faces, a set of morphing effects that use state-of-the-art face recognition and GPU filters to transform facial features. For example, you can use effects such as small eyes, big mouth, big nose, face squeeze, and more. Outside of the Camera app, Live Effects is available during video chat in the Google Talk app.
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Snapping a screenshot.
Sharing with screenshots
You can now share what's on your screens more easily by taking screenshots. Hardware buttons let them snap a screenshot and store it locally. Afterward, you can view, edit, and share the screen shot in Gallery or a similar app.
Cloud-connected experience
Android has always been cloud-connected, letting you browse the web and sync photos, apps, games, email, and contacts — wherever you are and across all of your devices. Android 4.0 adds new browsing and email capabilities to let you take even more with them and keep communication organized.
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The Browser tabs menu (left) lets you quickly switch browser tabs. The options menu (right) gives you new ways to manage your browsing experience.
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Benchmark comparisons of Android Browser.
Powerful web browsing
The Android Browser offers an experience that’s as rich and convenient as a desktop browser. It lets you instantly sync and manage Google Chrome bookmarks from all of your accounts, jump to your favorite content faster, and even save it for reading later in case there's no network available.
To get the most out of web content, you can now request full desktop versions of web sites, rather than their mobile versions. You can set your preference for web sites separately for each browser tab. For longer content, you can save a copy for offline reading. To find and open saved pages, you can browse a visual list that’s included with browser bookmarks and history. For better readability and accessibility, you can increase the browser’s zoom levels and override the system default text sizes.
Across all types of content, the Android Browser offers dramatically improved page rendering performance through updated versions of the WebKit core and the V8 Crankshaft compilation engine for JavaScript. In benchmarks run on a Nexus S device, the Android 4.0 browser showed an improvement of nearly 220% over the Android 2.3 browser in the V8 Benchmark Suite and more than 35% in the SunSpider 9.1 JavaScript Benchmark. When run on a Galaxy Nexus device, the Android 4.0 browser showed improvement of nearly 550% in the V8 benchmark and nearly 70% in the SunSpider benchmark.
Improved email
In Android 4.0, email is easier to send, read, and manage. For composing email, improved auto-completion of recipients helps with finding and adding frequent contacts more quickly. For easier input of frequent text, you can now create quick responses and store them in the app, then enter them from a convenient menu when composing. When replying to a message, you can now toggle the message to Reply All and Forward without changing screens.
For easier browsing across accounts and labels, the app adds an integrated menu of accounts and recent labels. To help you locate and organize IMAP and Exchange email, the Email app now supports nested mail subfolders, each with synchronization rules. You can also search across folders on the server, for faster results.
For enterprises, the Email app supports EAS v14. It supports EAS certificate authentication, provides ABQ strings for device type and mode, and allows automatic sync to be disabled while roaming. Administrators can also limit attachment size or disable attachments.
For keeping track of incoming email more easily, a resizable Email widget lets you flick through recent email right from the home screen, then jump into the Email app to compose or reply.
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Android Beam lets you share what you are using with a single tap.
Innovation
Android is continuously driving innovation forward, pushing the boundaries of communication and sharing with new capabilities and interactions.
Android Beam for NFC-based sharing
Android Beam is an innovative, convenient feature for sharing across two NFC-enabled devices, It lets people instantly exchange favorite apps, contacts, music, videos — almost anything. It’s incredibly simple and convenient to use — there’s no menu to open, application to launch, or pairing needed. Just touch one Android-powered phone to another, then tap to send.
For sharing apps, Android Beam pushes a link to the app's details page in Android Market. On the other device, the Market app launches and loads the details page, for easy downloading of the app. Individual apps can build on Android Beam to add other types of interactions, such as passing game scores, initiating a multiplayer game or chat, and more.
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Face recognition lets you unlock your phone with your face.
Face Unlock
Android 4.0 introduces a completely new approach to securing a device, making each person's device even more personal — Face Unlock is a new screen-lock option that lets you unlock your device with your face. It takes advantage of the device front-facing camera and state-of-the-art facial recognition technology to register a face during setup and then to recognize it again when unlocking the device. Just hold your device in front of your face to unlock, or use a backup PIN or pattern.
Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth HDP
Support for Wi-Fi Direct lets you connect directly to nearby peer devices over Wi-Fi, for more reliable, higher-speed communication. No internet connection or tethering is needed. Through third-party apps, you can connect to compatible devices to take advantage of new features such as instant sharing of files, photos, or other media; streaming video or audio from another device; or connecting to compatible printers or other devices.
Android 4.0 also introduces built-in support for connecting to Bluetooth Health Device Profile (HDP) devices. With support from third-party apps, you can connect to wireless medical devices and sensors in hospitals, fitness centers, homes, and elsewhere.

Motorola ZOOM 2 review in detail. with photo and video


Though the original Motorola Xoomstood out as the first big tablet push with backing from Google, it didn't turn out quite to be pinnacle of Android tablets.
It was soon surpassed by the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1as a straight-up iPad 2 competitor, while the Asus Eee Pad Slider andAsus Eee Pad Transformershowed that Android tablets could really excel when they did something different.
Still, there's no doubt the Xoom was a good device in its own right, so Motorola's been tweaking and trimming, and has now released the Xoom 2.
Though there have been some internal changes, it's the outside where the difference is most notable. Motorola seems determined to take the iPad 2 head-on here, because the Xoom 2 has the same thin profile as the iPad 2 (both measure just 8.8mm thick), and at 599g is actually lighter a whole 2g lighter than Apple's tablet.
Inside, the 1GHz dual-core processor of the original has been bumped up to 1.2GHz, all the better to smoothly run Android 3.2. Sadly, there's no Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich here at launch, which inevitably means any Xoom 2 owners will always be looking over the horizon at the rosy unified future.
The screen is the same size and resolution as the original Xoom: 1280 x 800 pixels in a 10.1-inch display. It's an IPS panel, and so offers excellent viewing angles, which is what we expect from a good tablet.
motorola xoom 2 review
There's 1GB of RAM on offer, to ensure that multitasking runs as smoothly as possible, and there's 16GB of on-board storage.
Surprisingly, this can't be increased with a microSD card, despite there being a flap on the side of the Xoom 2 that you would think would cover a microSD card slot. Instead, it covers… some plastic.
motorola xoom 2 review
Motorola seems to think that its included MotoCast software will cover the need for more media storage, enabling you to access the media on your computer from your device, anywhere. Well, nearly anywhere – there's no 3G in the Xoom 2, though there is a GPS chip.
There's a rear-facing camera on the Xoom 2 that can take five-megapixel snaps and record video at 720p, while the front-facing camera has a 1.3-megapixel sensor.
motorola xoom 2 review
Despite the thickness and weight similarities between the Xoom 2 and the iPad 2, they end up feeling quite different in the hand because of their different shapes. The Xoom 2 has a 16:10 widescreen display, while the iPad is 4:3.
This means that, in portrait, the Xoom 2 actually feels slightly more comfortable to hold in one hand, because it isn't as wide. Conversely, the iPad 2 is slightly more comfortable in landscape, because the Xoom 2 stretches further.
Like the iPad 2, the Xoom 2 has edges that curve and taper back from the screen, hiding the buttons when viewed straight on. Held in landscape, with the camera at the top, on the right-hand side you've got a Sleep/Wake button and volume controls, and on top is the 3.5mm headphone jack.
On the bottom is a micro-USB port and micro-HDMI port, along with the mystery flap that goes nowhere.
motorola xoom 2 review
The back of the Xoom 2 features matte plastic around the edge, with a shinier, more metallic plastic in the middle. The matte plastic is superbly grippy, and really helps you keep a firm hold on the slender frame, while the metallic look lend a bit of class to proceedings. It's a great balance of looks and ergonomics.
The only problem is that build quality is a little disappointing. We're not saying it feels like the Xoom 2 is going to fall apart or anything, but there's give in the middle of the back in particular that really grated on us. You can feel it shifting whenever pressure is applied, including most times you pick it up.
motorola xoom 2 review
It's not something that affects operation, and you may not notice it as much depending on how you hold it (it's far less noticeable in landscape), but it feels unpleasant beneath your fingers.
motorola xoom 2 review
The screen is also suspect, not for it's quality, but for being a dirt and grease magnet – even more so than most tablets. It very quickly starts to feel different, and nasty, under your fingers, and it doesn't have any kind of easy-clean oleophobic coating, so you'll want to make sure it gets a proper polish regularly.
Despite those criticisms, the Xoom 2 is a fairly handsome and mostly well-made tablet. Though it clearly took a few design cues from the iPad, the different shape and materials give it a look that's different to Apple's tablet, and most of the other Android tablets out there.
But we did find the design somewhat familiar, as will many Nokia fans. With the curving, cut corners and big widescreen, we have to say the Nokia N8came strongly to mind.

Features

Though some Android manufacturers have tweaked the tablet formula with success – notably Asus' Eee Pad Sliderand Eee Pad Transformer – Motorola is sticking with the classics when it comes to the Xoom 2.
This is just a slim, light slate when it comes to hardware, without even a microSD port, so it's down to the software to make it stand out.
Well, almost. There is one unusual hardware feature worth mentioning – Motorola says the tablet has a "splash-guard coating" both outside the Xoom 2 and inside, on the circuit boards. It's designed to offer a bit of protection against accidental spills and getting surprised by rain when you're using the Xoom outside.
motorola xoom 2 review
We're not talking about any serious waterproofing here, but it's clear that Motorola sees the Xoom 2 as a kind of roaming companion device, and giving it an extra layer of protection will no doubt help people to feel more comfortable using somewhere like the kitchen.
The two big software additions to Android 3.2 reinforce this idea of a handy portable screen: the Floating Notes app and MotoCast.
motorola xoom 2 review
The Floating Notes app sits permanently in the bottom bar, where notifications come up. You can tap it at any time to bring up the options to create a new Floating Note, view your notes in a window where you can sort them by date create, title, and so on, or you can open the built-in Evernote app.
The Floating Notes app itself is a fairly simple drawing and typing app – you can scrawl things down in the main part, adjust the brush size and colour, add some typed text at the top, and even send a note to the Tasks app so you can action something on it later. You can also share notes by Bluetooth, email, Dropbox and, probably most usefully, Evernote syncing.
motorola xoom 2 review
There's a couple of Floating notes widgets to make it easy to get straight into a note, while a notes carousel lets you browse through your notes as a widget, much like the Android Honeycomb YouTube app.
MotoCast is the other big software feature for the Xoom 2. It's a media streaming app, essentially, but a custom one designed to make the process as easy as possible.
You install the MotoCast software on your computer, decide which folders to allow it to see, and then open the app on your Xoom to connect to those folders and stream music, videos and movies.
motorola xoom 2 review
The reason for having a dedicated server app, and not just using DLNA streaming over a local network, is that it provides a simple way to get remote access to your media wherever you are – in another room in the house, or hundreds of miles away.
Moto is so convinced that this is the way forward, as it explained to us, that it's part of the reason why there's no SD card slot, and only 16GB of storage.
We'l give our verdict on MotoCast on the next page, but it's definitely a big part of Motorola's plans for the mobile market.
One of the Xoom 2's other party tricks, and yet more evidence of Motorola's designs on the living room, is the built-in infrared receiver and bundled Dijit app. Essentially, the Xoom 2 can become a universal remote control for your TV setup. We had no problems getting it to work with our kit just by searching the database for the right models, though it has to be said that the on-screen remotes are a little light on features compared to the real thing.
motorola xoom 2 review
Don't assume that it's all play and no work when it comes to the Xoom 2, though. There's a Citrix app included, for you enterprisey types, and Quickoffice HD is also bundled, with cloud integration for Google Docs, Dropbox, Box, SugarSync and more.

Performance

The Motorola Xoom 2's most noticeable upgrade might be in the chassis, but it's also had an upgrade to a 1.2GHz CPU, along with Android 3.2.
This has produced a tablet that's quite snappy overall, though it does still suffer from the odd moment where swipes take a moment to register. The only real disappointment when it comes to performance in the operating system is switching orientation.
It almost always takes a couple of seconds to switch, no matter if you're just on the Home screen or if you're in a resource-intensive app. It doesn't spoil the tablet or anything, but it's an annoyance that most its competitors don't have (save for the HP TouchPad, which was much, much worse).
But, overall, the Xoom 2 is as smooth to use as the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, and isn't far off the Asus Eee Pad Slider's slick operation at all.
We found the keyboard on the Xoom 2 to be one of its weaker points, with lots of taps going astray. It just doesn't sit as comfortably under the fingers as theiPad 2's or the HP TouchPad's (and obviously the physical keyboard option for the Asus Eee Pad Slider and Transformer are better), possibly due to the difference in screen shape.
motorola xoom 2 review
The screen itself is nice and clear, with natural colours that look great for video. The 1280 x 800 resolution means that text is nice and clear, too. The brightness is our only small concern – it just isn't that bright, and the auto-brightness doesn't help by being really quite aggressive.
We had to keep the brightness up at maximum pretty much always, even just in regular household lighting (as opposed to harsh tungsten office lights, for example). Certainly, the screen is bright enough for almost any use, but there's really no margin for boosting it further in really bright artificial light, or sunlight.
Alas, there's another small problem with the screen: the backlight. There are a few spots where it bleeds through quite noticeably, particularly when on a screen with a dark background, including the Settings screen. You won't notice it all the time, but it's disappointing.
Despite that, we do think the screen on the Xoom 2 is pretty good overall, and it needs to be, because there's no doubt this is a media-focussed tablet. Instead of dragging and dropping media to it when plugged in over USB, you use MotoCast USB to bring over things like iTunes playlists, or select media from folders.
Like Windows Phone Connector, it'll automatically convert videos if they're in a format the Xoom 2 can't play natively (though Motorola's software is better than Microsoft's, because it doesn't insist on also converting the stuff that was fine to begin with).
motorola xoom 2 review
The MotoCast USB software was a bit hit-and-miss, though; it crashed on us a lot, making it impossible to get anything on the device. But when it worked, it worked fine.
Everything's easy to access on the device, with music in the Music app and photos and videos in the Gallery app. The Music is a bit slow in landscape when you've got a decent collection, but is faster to flick through in portrait.
1080p video plays back smoothly, except not over the HDMI port – everything mirrors smoothly when you connect to an HDTV, except for all video that plays back in the main Android player. You just get the controls with a black screen behind them. Not ideal.
The wireless MotoCast app works quite well on a local network, except for one significant flaw. Though it connects seamlessly to the folders you set it up with, it often misreported the contents of video folders for us. It listed everything fine, but when we tapped on what we wanted, it sometimes opened something else. It was like a shuffle function for our videos that we couldn't turn off. Superb.
Actually streaming something is the part that works. We had occasional stutters, but it was mostly fine. Go outside your local network and you'll encounter more struggles, though.
Because it's not actually coming from the cloud, but from your PC, you'll need a really good upload speed to get anything out of it. More than that, though, your computer must be up and running for it to work. If it goes on standby, you'll find that you'll get an 'offline' message when you try to access it.
MotoCast is a nice idea, and could be a great addition to make Motorola's tablet stand out, but it needs more work.
The loudspeakers on the Xoom 2 can go loud enough for most situations, but they make the whole back of the tablet vibrate when they're loud, and the sound gets much more distorted at high volumes than it does on, say, the iPad.
The browser on the Xoom 2 proved to be fairly snappy, though Opera Mobile is also included, should you want to go that route. Adobe Flash is preinstalled, so consider that box ticked.
As we said, the browser is fairly fast, with pages loading quickly for the most part, but loading Flash content does hold many pages back compared those without Flash.
And the old spectre of Flash causing the responsiveness of the browser to slow is also present, but even with a video on the page, zooming and panning is pretty good. And you can pinch to zoom and pan around the page at the same time! (It's something a surprising number of Android devices lack the ability to do.)
In real life, we're not looking at the fastest tablet browser around in the Xoom 2, but it's fast enough that it won't make much difference day to day.
Battery life
For battery life, the Xoom 2 made a good account of itself, though it was slightly up and down. Whereas some Android tablets have problems keeping power use to a minimum on standby, the Xoom 2 was very good, and we're sure it'd be able to last you for days on end (rather than misplacing a fifth of its battery overnight, as some do).
That said, it's surprising just how much power certain aspects of the Xoom 2 use. At one point, we managed to use 20% of the battery during about an hour of internet testing.
Granted, we were loading sites over and over, and testing Flash performance a lot, but it seemed a little much. We did have the screen's brightness turned all the way up, but it has to be in a well-lit room, or it's a little hard to see what you're doing.
But, there have been plenty of other times we've been using the Xoom 2 more sporadically, and the battery use hasn't gone down far at all.
Ultimately, the iPad 2 is still the tablet battery life king, but the Xoom 2 does quite well for itself. Just mind the Flash content.
The built-in GPS chip worked quite well for us, narrowing us down quickly. With no 3G to stream maps, it's a slightly odd addition, but we can't knock it for functionality.
The camera on the Xoom 2 is decent enough, capturing accurate colours and crisp lines, and letting in a good amount of light even in low light. The detail can be a little soft, but overall they're good snaps.
Similarly, the 720p HD video is passable, if not spectacular. It's not up to par with better dedicated cameras, or the best phones, but you can make out what's happening easily, though fast motion can become quite blurred.

Verdict

The Motorola Xoom 2 is an interesting change from the original Motorola Xoom.
Being thinner and lighter - more like an iPad 2 - but with extra processing power and some media-focussed features are all good things, but cutting back on things like a microSD card slot makes it feel like two steps forward and one step back.
We liked
The Xoom 2 has a nice design, and we definitely like how thin and light it is. And though the screen isn't quite as bright as we'd like, it's got vibrant colours and excellent viewing angles.
Performance is good on the Xoom 2, for the most part, and Android 3.2 works fairly smoothly. We were also quite happy with the battery life, even if it possible to eat up quicker than you'd think with some intensive web browsing.
Some of the media features are great ideas – the Dijit app may have some basic controls, but it's easy as you like to set up, and worked perfectly for us, and MotoCast could grow to be a very useful service. We really like the splashproofing, too.
We disliked
The way the Xoom 2 rattles when the loudspeaker is high and the bit of give in the back are both unfortunate, as is the fact that screen is a horrendous fingerprint/grease magnet.
They all conspire to make the unit feel slightly less well-made than it actually is, on balance.
The keyboard is a weak spot, and the slow response to changing the orientation serves to make the operating system feel as though it needs a little more polish on this device.
And we said, the MotoCast could grow to be a useful service, but at the moment it's fundamentally flawed. It requires your computer to be on all the time, your internet connection to have vast upload speeds if you're using it remotely, and it frequently opened the wrong video when we tried to select something.
And the lack of microSD card is perplexing given the flakiness of the MotoCast service, and the lack of any larger storage option. Yes, 16GB will be enough for many people, but those who need simply won't be able to buy the Xoom 2.
The price is a sticking point, too. It's close enough to the iPad 2 as makes no odds, and it doesn't come off well in that comparison, let alone against other Android tablets that are cheaper. You can get the Asus Eee Pad Transformerfor a good chunk less. In fact, for only £100 more, you'll be able to get the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, with double the storage, a keyboard dock, a quad-core processor and it's actually thinner and lighter than the Xoom 2.
Verdict
Taken in isolation, the Xoom 2 isn't a bad tablet by any means. It's thin and light, it runs fairly smoothly and has decent battery life. But it's really hampered by the lack of storage options, and that inflexibility is its downfall when you consider the price.
It doesn't quite match the best Android tablets or the iPad for quality, and many good Android tablets have it beaten for price. The Xoom 2 is an improvement over the original Xoom, but not over the competition.

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