Friday, May 13, 2011

Telstra’s XOOM to ship with Android 3.0, receive 3.1 update later

The Motorola XOOM tablet which Telstra will begin selling in Australia on May 24 will ship with Android 3.0 installed a Motorola spokesperson has confirmed, with the tablet to receive an upgrade to 3.1 via an update at a later date.

Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” was the first iteration of Google’s open-source mobile operating system designed with tablet devices in mind. It’s focused on large-screen devices, and featured a completely revamped ‘holographic’ user interface designed especially to create devices to rival the likes of Apple’s iPad in the tablet arena.

The first major update for the tablet-centric edition, announced at Google’s annual developer conference on Wednesday, Google I/O and dubbed Android 3.1 will retain the “Honeycomb” nickname and see a number of tweaks made to the OS including the ability to resize widgets, an improved task manager and an array of different bug fixes.

It’s being rolled out now to XOOM owners who are with Verizon in the United States, but Google says it’ll become more widely available soon.

However with the device soon to arrive on Australian shores with Telstra first and then Optus in June, a Motorola spokesperson has confirmed the updated OS won’t be available immediately here.

“XOOM is shipping on Android 3.0 in Australia and we don’t have any information on upgrades at this point,” a spokesperson from Motorola confirmed to iTech Report.

The XOOM is one of few tablet devices to be made available in Australia running Android Honeycomb, and made waves in the US when it launched just months ago.

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