First Impressions on the Motorola Xoom

Before this project started I`d already had contact with android. I had an Htc Hero 2 years ago, so it wasn`t a new experience for me from this point of view. I roughly understood how it works.

First Impressions:  As soon as I put my hands on it I started downloading apps. First came the ones that I`ve already known about. I`ll mention Advanced Task Killer because no one said anything about it before. It`s a useful app because it can stop the applications that are running underground, thus improving speed, memory, battery life.  Other apps that I installed: Google Reeder, Wifi File Transfer Pro, Mx Video Player, Amazon Kindle, Wunderlist, Games

I also have available a laptop and an Iphone, but ever since I`ve had the tablet I tried  to do everything on it so i can figure out to what extent can the tablet substitute them. Google Reeder it`s better to use on the tablet than on the iphone simply because it`s bigger. The Widgets are also very useful and  they are not available on OS. I was very curious how would be to read o book on the tablet and I have to say I was impressed. My eyes didn`t get tired as i expected and  the fact that I can have the definition of a word just by holding  2 seconds on it is very useful for me. I do not have to keep Google Translate near all the time any more.

When it comes to lectures, it is helpful in the way that  i have all the materials needed with me without any piece of paper. Whenever I need a study case, a handout I can just download it. Taking notes is indeed a bit more difficult on the tablet than with the traditional “pen and paper”, but Stefano proved that with practice one can get used to it. Moreover, for me is not very inconvenient because I do not take many notes.

Some of the downsides are: it`ssometimes slow when navigating online or viewing a power point file; I see the message “this applications is not responding” quite often; video call on Skype doesn`t work either and I can`t figure out why.

Android 4 should be available soon and I am anxious to see what changes will it bring.

Ioan David