Hard Sell: Motorola’s $800 Xoom Tablet, No Flash Support

Apple may not have to worry too much about Motorola's Xoom tablet considering its steep price and lack of the competitive feature Adobe Flash

Motorola's Xoom tablet is seen by many as the iPad's first big competitor, but its steep $800 price and lack of Adobe Flash support suggest otherwise.

Has the upcoming Motorola Xoom fallen at the first hurdle in the fight against Apple's iPad dominance? After Motorola announced its iPad competitor will cost more than the iPad, a Verizon promo uncovered the fact that the Xoom won't come with support for Adobe's Flash technology until sometime this spring.

Support for Adobe's Flash technology has been an argument for the Android operating system since Apple CEO Steve Jobs notoriously said that Flash is a dying technology and that it won't make it onto iOS devices for several reasons. Flash support appeared in Android with version 2.2 and Google even flaunted it as a killer feature for tablets running Honeycomb (3.0), like the Motorola Xoom.

But it looks like Adobe and/or Google have yet to put the finishing touches on Flash's implementation in Android 3.0. An advertisement for the Xoom on Verizon's site says (in 6 point text at the bottom) that Adobe Flash support on the Xoom is expected in Spring 2011, meaning this functionality won't be available at the launch of the first Honeycomb tablet on February 24. Considering how slow carriers and manufacturers are when it comes to software updates, this Spring 2011 update could mean more like late Spring 2011 ETA.

Meanwhile, Adobe said last week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that it is still working on Flash 10.2 for smartphones and tablets running Android. The company promised users of dual-core tablets and phones will benefit of HD Flash video and up to 30 frames per second performance. Flash 10.2 for Windows and Mac has been released earlier this month, but Adobe gave no clear indication when the mobile version of the plug-in will actually be available for users.

So far, despite positive initial reactions from reviewers, the Motorola Xoom has failed two tests against the iPad. Despite the Xoom's better specifications, the tablet is still more expensive than the closest iPad match. The 32GB 3G iPad costs $729, while the Xoom equivalent is $800, besides any contracts you might have to sign with Verizon. Add that to the fact that Flash support will be missing initially, a defining feature in the war against the iPad, and Xoom's chances to be a major hit suddenly don't stack up that well.

Acer Unveils Iconia Dual-Screen Laptop Tablet

Whether you agree tablets will replace laptops or not the idea does seem to be slowly gaining traction, this time with Acer announcing Iconia, a tablet with two 14-inch touch screens in a laptop-like clam shell form.

The two multi-touch screens are ultra-thin, scratch and fingerprint resistant LED backlit LCDs made from a durable glass material, and featuring a resolution of 1366×768, and support for up to 10 fingers touch control at once.

They act as a dual-screen set up so a window can be maximized over both screens or each screen can be used for its own tasks. For example, the bottom screen can be used for a media file browser and the top screen for viewing videos.

Perhaps most importantly for those who might consider this as a laptop replacement Acer Iconia comes with a QWERTY Virtual Keyboard that activates when both palms are placed on the bottom display. It includes a virtual touchpad, a numeric keypad, predictive text input, and support for international keyboard layouts. The intent was to make the virtual keyboard good enough to replace a physical keyboard of traditional laptops.

Acer also emphasized software applications tailored to multi-touch capabilities. The special software is launched by putting five fingers on the display and making a grabbing gesture, which Acer calls an "Acer Ring". This gives a choice of applications including a Gesture Editor which allows assigning user defined gestures to specific tasks, a Window Manager, a Device Control Console, and a Virtual Keyboard.

Acer Iconia also comes with Acer's existing applications from their other touch screen devices including TouchBrowser, TouchPhoto, TouchMusic and TouchVideo, and three new ones including SocialJogger for checking Facebook, YouTube and Flickr in one place, My Journal for collecting web clippings of interesting stuff, and Scrapbook for storing clippings, notes, screen shots and so on.

Its Intel Core i5 CPU reminds more of a laptop than a tablet, but Acer didn't provide any information about memory and storage capacity. They did boast about an HDMI for connecting to an HDTV, and possible 3G connectivity.

Iconia should be available in December or early 2011, but the pricing is still unknown.

Here is a video preview:

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