10 Reasons Why The Motorola Xoom Beats The iPad 2

But the competition will get stiffer in the days to come. The Motorola Xoom is among the best competitors; here is a look at ten reasons why Motorola Xoom is better.

Display: Previously, Steve Job criticized smaller display sizes and said a 7-inch screen would be too small to effectively use media-oriented software. Hence the 9.7-inch display offered by the iPad 2. Motorola's Xoom ships with a larger 10.1-inch, 800 x 1280 pixel display screen compared to the iPad 2’s 9.7-inch, 768 x 1024 display.The Xoom also has widescreen ratio of 16:9 so that images ported from movies fit better than they would on the 1:1.33 ratio on the Apple iPad.

Operating system: Google has introduced the new Android Honeycomb, which is specifically designed for tablets. The iPad 2 on the other hand has the upgraded iOS operating system. Basically, the iOS 4.3 was tweaked but not a major breakthrough. The Honeycomb is a better OS as it handles notifications, better multi-tasking and app switching, the widgets outdo the iOS and it is more customizable. The major offering in iOS 4.3 is a faster Safari browser, enhancements to AirPlay and the new iTunes Home Sharing feature, enabling users to play content stored in desktop over Wi-Fi.

4G upgradable: The Xoom tablet is upgradable to 4G, and Motorola will do it free of charge. Upgrades should be available in second quarter of 2011. The iPad 2 does not feature 4G connectivity.

Browser: The chrome browser featured in Xoom provides tabbed browsing and like the PC and Mac version of Chrome, a single box does double duty as a search box and for typing in a URL. And Chrome automatically syncs your bookmarks on PC and Mac. Safari does not do this nearly as well.

Flash: The Xoom tablet didn’t feature Adobe Flash during its launch but the Flash support is expected soon via an upgrade. There is no word of Flash compatibility being added to the iPad 2.

Download freedom:Although Apple features much more apps than Android market, it also bans plenty of apps as well. The Xoom will be able to connect to the Android app markets, which have fewer restrictions though quality control can be an issue. Memory:

Apple has not revealed the how much RAM the iPad 2 has. AppleInsider is reporting early analyses are finding 512 MB, which would be double the earlier models. The Xoom features a 1 GB which goes with the 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 AP20H Dual Core processor for better performance and 3D game capability.

Camera: Motorola Xoom features a better camera as it has a 5-megapixel rear camera and 2-megapixel front camera compared to iPad 2’s 0.7-megapixel rear and the fron-facing VGA camera.

Card Slot/HDMI: Motorola has a microSD card slot for up to 32 GB and features an HDMI port, which Apple iPad 2 lacks.

Audio: The Motorola Xoom features stereo speakers as against Apple iPad 2’s one.