Motorola Droid Xyboard 8.2

Motorola Droid Xyboard 8.2Compared to Motorola Xoom, the Droid Xyboard 8.2 takes a different direction, it is powerful, lightweight and thin; but inside, it still feels like a XOOM. The Xyboard 8.2 has an eye-pleasing matte finish and feels great. While it won’t win a beauty contest, the tablet is surprisingly easy to hold.

The specs are roughly similar to the XOOM except for a few changes. It has a faster 1.2GHz dual-core SoC, 1GH of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, two cameras and 4G LTE connection. The 8.2” 1280×800 IPS display is a huge improvement over the early XOOM. Unfortunately it has no microSD card slot, but its microUSB port can be used for both transferring data and charging.  The Xyboard 8.2 offers everything we have come to expect from a Honeycomb tablet. However, it feels like an over sized DROID smartphone sometimes, as it uses the same Blur overlay. Overall, Motorola applies minimal changes to the stock Honeycomb version, which ensure better performance and compatibility with most apps. However, if you get the tablet from Verizon, it comes with plenty of bloatware. Nevertheless, it has a few worthwhile apps pre installed like Netflix, Amazon Kindle and Blockbuster. Not to mention the exciting Madden 2012 NFL game and the useful organizer app, Evernote.

The Xyboard 8.2 is equipped with a decent 5Mp rear-facing camera, but unfortunately, like other Motorola devices, the shutter feels sluggish. To avoid getting blurry images, you need to hold the phone long enough when snapping an object. The tablet comes with a 3980 mAh battery and it can still be charged fully through the microUSB port. The charger does the job well, but charging from a PC or laptop is painfully slow. With light to moderate usage, without any gaming session, the phone can last for three days on a single charge. To wrap up, the Xyboard 8.2 is worthy successor to previous Motorola’s tablets, with its excellent performance, decent battery life and solid build quality.

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