Motorola Xoom Teardown: Inside The New Android Tablet
UBM TechInsights, a sister company to UBM Techweb, InformationWeek's parent company, took apart the newest Motorola tablet, the 10.1-inch Xoom, the first dual-core Android tablet and the first tablet to run Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). Inside is Nvidia's Tegra 2 processor. In fact, many of the Xoom's components are similar to those of Motorola's newest smartphone, the Atrix 4G. That's not a surprise given that Apple and Samsung, for example, share design components across tablets and smartphones; an
February 24, 2011
Motorola's Xoom began shipping on Feb. 24. Verizon offered a 3G version without a contract ($799) and with a two-year contract ($599). It also promised to upgrade all devices to 4G LTE for free. It is the first tablet to run Android 3.0 (Honeycomb).
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Motorola Xoom Teardown: What's Under The Covers
(Special thanks to Allan Yogasingam and the UBM TechInsights team.)
The Xoom tablet has no physical buttons, which is becoming a trend among the new tablets coming out this year. The tablet has a 2-megapixel camera on the front and a 5-megapixel camera on the back. It ships with 32 GB of storage.
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Motorola Xoom Teardown: What's Under The Covers
And ... we're in. We've removed the back cover before starting to dive into all of the tablet components. The back cover has a more rubberized grip; in fact, the device is plastic whereas the iPad is aluminum.
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Motorola Xoom Teardown: What's Under The Covers
This is a closer look at the back side of the Xoom, with the back cover taken off. You can see the main board lining the edges of the device.
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Motorola Xoom Teardown: What's Under The Covers
When we removed the back casing, it revealed the stereo speakers. These speakers face the rear of the device. Some early reviews have criticized the audio quality as a result -- the notion being that you'll usually be working with the tablet facing you, so rear-facing speakers send the sound the wrong way.
Related:
Motorola Xoom Teardown: What's Under The Covers
Removing some of the larger components from the Xoom so we can get to the main board and see all the goodies.
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Motorola Xoom Teardown: What's Under The Covers
The main board contains all of the unit's processors -- the dual core Nvidia chip, of course, but also Bluetooth, communications, memory, and more.
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Motorola Xoom Teardown: What's Under The Covers
This is the Xoom's touch screen. The Xoom has a 10.1-inch display, a 1200 x 800 resolution, and weighs 1.6 pounds, a wee bit heavier than the iPad, with a bigger screen (the iPad's is 9.7 inches) and higher resolution (the iPad's is 1024 x 768).
Related:
Motorola Xoom Teardown: What's Under The Covers
This is the Xoom's main board from the front.
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Motorola Xoom Teardown: What's Under The Covers
A backside view of the Xoom's main board. Now onto the components ...
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Motorola Xoom Teardown: What's Under The Covers
Here, we've labeled all of the front-side components -- the Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor, DDRM RAM, the W-Fi and Bluetooth chip from Broadcom, Compass from Aki Semiconductor, Toshiba memory, and Qualcomm's multi-mode communication chip.
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Motorola Xoom Teardown: What's Under The Covers
And there's more on the back side of the Xoom's main board: Toshiba storage and flash memory, Kionix Accelerometer, ST Micro's Gyro, and Qualcomm's PMU.
Related:
Motorola Xoom Teardown: What's Under The Covers
And there's more on the back side of the Xoom's main board: Toshiba storage and flash memory, Kionix Accelerometer, ST Micro's Gyro, and Qualcomm's PMU.
Related:
Motorola Xoom Teardown: What's Under The Covers
Motorola's Xoom began shipping on Feb. 24. Verizon offered a 3G version without a contract ($799) and with a two-year contract ($599). It also promised to upgrade all devices to 4G LTE for free. It is the first tablet to run Android 3.0 (Honeycomb).
Related:
Motorola Xoom Teardown: What's Under The Covers
(Special thanks to Allan Yogasingam and the UBM TechInsights team.)
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