In the Android-powered tablet realm, the Motorola Xoom has the distinction of being the first tablet to ship with Android 3.0 Honeycomb, the version of the Android operating system designed specifically for tablets. When the tablet was added on to the lineup of Verizon’s Android-powered devices, the Motorola Xoom was also the first device of the wireless provider to support its 4G LTE network. It was initially a good attraction in the consumer market but the entry of other devices such as the Asus Transformer relegated the Motorola tablet to the background.Back in the day, we all thought that the Motorola Xoom will no longer get upgraded to the latest iteration of the Android operating system and spend its waning days in the Honeycomb generation. It is a good thing that that is no longer the case as we got the confirmation that the Motorola tablet is about to get its taste of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Great news, definitely but what’s even better is that the wait for the update to land will be a relatively short one.
Verizon already released the word that the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update for the Motorola Xoom tablet will start rolling out on June 4. This came out after there were rumors last week that the manufacturer is already in the midst of a soak test for the ICS update for the Motorola Xoom, although the reports were all unconfirmed.
Once applied to the tablet, the update will obviously crank up the software version of the Motorola Xoom to Ice Cream Sandwich but aside from that, it will also bring other goodies such as the option to have notifications dismissed individually along with text to speech functionality. Not only that, the ICS update for the tablet will also bring to the table a built-in app for photo editing for some on the go editing functionality.
If you happen to rock a Motorola Xoom from Verizon, then you might want to check your tablet every once in a while if the notification for the ICS update has already landed on your device. Or, if you’d rather take things into your own hands, you can always manually check for the update as often as you like.
As for the Motorola Xoom, the tablet reached official status when it was announced back in February of 2011 but in only became available off the shelves in March. The tablet has an NVIDIA Tegra 2 T20 chipset under the hood and this SoC brings into play dual-core capabilities for the tablet through its dual-core 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor and 1GB of RAM. The tablet has an onboard storage pegged at 32GB but a microSD card slot will let a user expand the internal memory of the Motorola Xoom if it is not enough. The display of the slate is a 10.1-inch TFT capacitive multitouch panel with a 1280 x 800 resolution while its camera department is comprised of a rear 5MP shooter and a 2MP front-facer.
