erizon: Xoom tablet to cost $800, or $600 with two-year contract
By Ben Patterson ben Patterson 1 hr 9 mins ago
Does $800 sound too steep for Motorola's soon-to-arrive, Honeycomb-powered Xoom tablet? If so, Verizon Wireless says it will shave $200 off the Xoom's sticker price—so long as you sign a two-year contract. Also: Verizon confirms that the Xoom won't ship with Flash support.
Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha had already told Reuters last week that the 10.1-inch, dual camera-wielding Xoom tablet—now officially set to go on sale this Thursday, February 24—would cost an unsubsidized $800.
But Verizon's announcement Tuesday marked the first time that the carrier officially confirmed its pricing for the 32GB, 3G-enabled Xoom, the first of an expected wave of Android 3.0 "Honeycomb"-powered tablets this year.
And if you're not thrilled by the Xoom's $800 price tag (which is, by the way, just $70 more than last year's camera-less 32GB iPad 3G), Verizon says it'll have another option on tap: a Xoom for $600, but with a two-year contract.
Signing on the dotted line would lock you in to one of Verizon's 3G tablet data plans, which start at 1GB of data for $20 a month. (You can also get 3GB of data for $35, 5GB for $50 a month, or 10GB for $80/month.)
Verizon also confirmed chatter Monday that the Xoom wouldn't arrive with built-in Flash support out of the box. Instead, the tablet will come with eventual "support" for Flash, which will be "available soon as a free download."
Adobe said Monday that Flash Player 10.2 for tablets would be arriving within "a few weeks" of the first Honeycomb devices going on sale—and given that the Xoom is set to land in stores on Thursday, it sounds like Adobe's Flash update won't be ready until sometime in March.
A couple of existing Android tablets—the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Dell Streak 7—already boast support for Flash. That said, the Tab and the Streak are both running on an earlier version of Android (2.2, to be precise) that wasn't originally intended for tablets.
One of the hottest devices to come out of last month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the Xoom packs in a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, a pair of cameras—a 5MP, HD video-recording camera in back, plus a 2MP lens in front for video chat—along with a 10.1-inch display, a microUSB port, and an HDMI video output.
The Xoom will initially ship with support for Verizon's 3G network only, although the carrier says an update due in the second quarter would enable access to its faster 4G LTE data network.
— Ben Patterson is a technology blogger for Yahoo! News.
Follow me on Twitter! |
