[Xoom General] Elysian893:
I'm sure plenty of you saw my Asurion thread here...

I've had the Xyboard for a week now, and while I'm still not happy with the fact they sent me a 16gb model, I've got to be honest, the Xyboard is incredible. I wrote a letter to the regional president of Verizon for my region but I'm going to leave it at that.

The Xyboard is a HUGE upgrade over the Xoom even though the specs on paper don't show it. It benchmarks in every benchmark higher than the Tegra 2, especially the graphical ones. The PowerVR SGX540 may be 'old' but it handles the 1280x800 screen like a champ. The Xyboard is all around faster than the Xoom (at least the Xoom on 3.2, on ICS is a different story but then when ICS hits the Xyboard it will easily be faster than the Xoom) in every day usage too, so its speed extends well beyond benchmarks and gaming. GTA3 runs even smoother on the Xyboard than the Xoom and I was honestly impressed with how it ran on the Xoom.

The screen on the Xyboard is gorgeous, I can't believe they didn't use this panel on the Xoom. TFT is dead to me now, officially. I didn't even realize how bad the screen on the Xoom was until I went back and forth between it and the Xyboard. Color representation on the Xyboard is glorious and it gets bright as all hell.

Battery life is vastly improved, and I found the Xoom to be quite acceptable. The thinness and lightness is nice, although I use my Xoom's portfolio case on my Xyboard so that's negated (surprisingly the portfolio case fits, although it's very very snug!). The new shape is interesting and quite honestly, better. Where the back met the sides on the Xoom was very sharp, and while it's sharp on the Xyboard it's not in a sort of way where it's metal digging into your hand, it's softtouch rubber. The center section of the back is metal (aluminum if I'd have to guess) so that feels nice under the hands.

The power button and volume rocker is a huge improvement. I hated the volume buttons on the Xoom, absolutely terrible until I got my gel case. I haven't tried either camera on the Xyboard really so I can't say much about those.

The one complaint I have is that they went back to USB charging. The Xoom had a proprietary connector that allowed it to charge VERY fast. The Xyboard is limited to 5v and 1.6A, meaning it charges VERY slowly compared to the Xoom's 12v 1.5A plug. That is extremely disappointing to me, but I'm glad I don't have to charge as often. The Xoom's battery life got worse after the 4G upgrade, it was very usable before that. The Xyboard doesn't have that problem, probably because it doesn't have to power an add-on card. Overall I'd probably give it a 9 out of 10 rating, it's pretty damned good... This is the tablet the Xoom should have been. Not to say that I would advocate others upgrading to the Xyboard, I only got one because it was cheaper this way.

Unfortunately it's going to be completely eclipsed by the coming quad core rush. I have no idea why they didn't wait for Tegra 3 or an OMAP quad core.

Oops, I have 1 other complaint. The Xyboard has a locked bootloader, meaning it's going to be incredibly challenging to root it. Honeycomb 3.2 sealed up all vulnerabilities that worked on prior versions of HC. I've already tried them all, there's just no way around it right now and I'm not experienced enough or plain intelligent enough to figure it out.