Sweet Treat for Motorola Xoom Users: Google Reveals ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’

By Janice McDuffee Y... on Thu, 2011-05-12 02:05

Just in case you Motorola Xoom fans haven’t heard yet, the sleek, albeit pricey tablet is due for an upgrade to Android 3.1, code name Ice Cream Sandwich.

Google announced the availability of the latest upgrade for the Xoom—the launch tablet for Android 3.0, also known as Honeycomb—at its I/O conference last Tuesday.

Users are in store for advanced features including improved task management, USB support, and vertical and horizontal stretching capabilities for widgets.

The improvements in task management largely come from its expanded recent apps list, allowing a larger visual to a greater number of apps in an expandable list. A thumbnail allows users to jump back to their task at hand after scrolling through the list, allowing multi-tasking with little effort.

The USB capabilities are a very important feature we’re seeing in a lot of the newer tablets. When a USB-connected device like a mouse, keyboard, game controller or camera is plugged into the Xoom, it will now recognize corresponding applications and retrieve it for download should the user desire. Further image support for digital cameras is also provided with Picture Transfer Protocal (PTP) support, allowing users to important pictures to their Gallery with one touch.

The Xoom has peaked a specific interest for the enterprise—as tablets are increasingly becoming a mainstay in the corporate world. The tablet, which Vernon Computer Source has available for corporate rental, was created with enterprise-class apps through the Citrix Receiver Client.

Further enterprise support has also improved with the upgrade, now configuring an HTTP proxy for each connected Wi-Fi access point. Administrators can now set a proxy hostname, port and bypass subdomains for the user. This platform also allows an "encrypted storage card" device policy to be accepted on devices with emulate storage cards and encrypted primary storage, according to InfoSync.

If you’re looking into tablet rentals, perhaps the Motorola Xoom—which you’d have to shell out $599 to purchase outright—may be the right fit for you.