Motorola's first Android based tablet, the Motorola XOOM will initially be exclusively available on the Verizon network in the US only.. but we very much hope that there will be a European version of this tablet coming soon.

One criticism of early Android tablets is that they are basically just scaled-up Android smartphones. The Samsung Galaxy Tab, for example, is a fine piece of hardware.. but the user experience doesn't seem to be as polished as it is with the iPad.

The Motorola XOOM addresses some of these issues by shipping with Android 3.0 "Honeycomb" - an operating system that has been designed to support tablets from the ground up. This means that the XOOM should be easier to use and will allow tablet-aware programs to do much more with the device.. while retaining compatibility with a vast array of existing Android applications.

Motorola XOOM Clearly the most obvious feature is the large 10.1" 1280 x 800 pixel display, but inside is a dual-core 1GHz processor which should provide plenty of processing power for the most demanding applications. On the back is a 5 megapixel camera (although it's a rather large device for snapshots), and on the front is a 2 megapixel camera for video calling. You can mount the XOOM on a stand which will make video calling much easier.

This is a CDMA/EVDO device with WiFi support, so it won't run on European cellular networks. The XOOM will be upgradeable to LTE (Verizon's version of 4G) in Q2 2011. Motorola often make both CDMA/EVDO and GSM/UMTS versions of the same smartphones, so we're fairly hopeful that this might be sold worldwide.

There's no word on pricing, but Motorola says that the XOOM will be available on Verizon from Q1 2011.