Motorola’s Lockable/Unlockable Xoom Tablet gets Official Pricing and makes a Gold Studded Appearance at the Oscar’s

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The new Motorola Xoom tablet has been arguably the most anticipated tablet in recent memory, outside of the Apple iPad two of course. The new Xoom gets its official pricing today and it’s not cheap, but one quick glance at its specs, it surely seems worth it to me. Recently Sanjay Jha spoke about the Xoom’s pricing listing the Xoom unsubsidized at around $799 and Wi-Fi only at $600. Today Verizon the premier carrier of the device announced its real ‘official’ pricing. On a new two year contract the Xoom will run you about $600 bucks and un-subsidized the Xoom will be $799.99. If you are considering a new Xoom keep in mind that Verizon’s data service packs start at $20 a month for 1GB on 3G.

Motorola in the past has been criticized for their extra efforts to keep their devices locked up real tight with encrypted boot loaders making root and super user access a bit more difficult to obtain. In response to that Motorola stated that they will be attempting to meet developers (and users in the know) half way. Most assumed a banishment of encryption all together. Today via Twitter it seems that the truth on the Xooms security settings has been revealed, exposing some goodness to developers and ‘super users’ alike. The tweet to a curious customer stated “the XOOM will have an unlockable/relockable bootloader that will enable developers to access hardware for development”. As the new Xoom is vanilla Android this was to be assumed, however reassurance from the horse mouth surely makes this tablet a bit desirable to many in the know.
Last and least, the Xoom will be making a red carpet appearance decked out for the occasion in gold. In the past few weeks we have seen some silver Xoom’s pop up, today however a rather pale gold version ofthe Xoom is showing face. Unfortunately it’s kind of out of reach for us normal folks. The gold Xoom and all its accessories pictured to the right will be given to hosts and nominees of the upcoming Oscars. Not all category however, just those who are up for the Best actor/actress, Best Supporting Actor/Actress and the Best Director. This leaves me to ponder how much we will see these on Ebay for.
Interested? I know I ‘am, just need to see the specs of the iPad 2 before jumping in. With the news of the boot loader, I’m sold on the Xoom, how about you?