Motorola Xoom aint what she used to be

I have had the Motorola Xoom for a couple of years. One of the early Android tablets. It is dual core but boy is it showing its age. Part of this is due to my quad core Note II. Everything on my phone is really snappy. Things on the Xoom used to be snappy but now everything seems slow. Boot up time really stinks.

Button presses to get to home screen or bring up list of running apps are pitiful. I still use the tablet a lot for content reading. That works just as well as it always has although the screen is not super bright nor does it have the great colors of the Note II. I enjoy doing crossword puzzles more on the tablet as you can see more of the clues and all of the grid.

Not ready to get a new tablet just yet though. The Xoom works for its specific purposes. The direct plug-in charger quit working but the base charger I ordered from Amazon works just fine. If that goes out then the tablet will be useless.

Next time I will look in a smaller than 10" range but I don't know if 7" is big enough. Probably something in the middle. At least on the Android side of things there appears to be a nice variety to choose from. The current size / weight can make it a bit tough to hold one handed for extended periods of time. I am usually petting a cat while reading articles or using my other hand to one finger type crossword puzzle answers.

Jelly Bean on my Xoom

Jelly Bean arrived on my Xoom last night and so far I like it. There are new animations during app transitions, when you have multiple unread emails you get to see the subject of each of them in the notification window and everything seems to be snappier which was the main point of this release.

Install was a ~80meg download followed by the install and reboot. Of course once the machine reboots all can seem snappy for a bit until you run a bunch of apps. I will see how this version does over time. It does look like Google is taking the knocks against Android seriously though. Always tough to fix something without breaking something else. All the apps I tried last night worked like a champ.

I think some of the new transitions happen during certain initialization stages of the app. I watched the USA Today app run a couple of the new transitions more than once which probably means that app is doing something odd that needs to be adjusted. As a programmer I know I have run into this in the past. You don't realize you are doing some initialization twice until you see the screen flicker, a double message in the log file etc.

Curious if they will come out with a version of Jelly Bean for my phone. Might be the thing that pushes me over the edge to root the phone and install something no directly from Samsung. Since Samsung no longer does OS updates for my phone I don't feel bad about doing this or worried that I will screw it up not waiting for an official release.

Looking forward to Jelly Bean

I really like my Android phone and tablet but the lagginess of the UI is a problem. It appears Google has listened to the masses and have at least attempted to address this issue with the Jelly Bean release. Since I have a WiFi only Xoom I should see the update by the end of the month.

Sadly I will not get Jelly Bean on my Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant phone where I really want it. I hate to get a call and not have the screen respond to me sliding to answer the call. The pretty much is a failure for a phone design, you must be able to answer a call especially when the phone is sitting idle on your desk. If I was in the middle of playing an intensive game them maybe they could have a minor excuse.

I have not found too much lag on the tablet and it is not a phone but I hope it improves enough that I can give Google credit for addressing this issue that has plagued Android from the start.

I don't use an iPhone other than for testing code I wrote but just from the interactions I have had with iOS is does seem to be more responsive. Background tasks can take longer to complete but when you are using the UI it is snappier. Cleaning this up should help Google ship on more devices. Not all devices will get the help they need which stinks. Of course older iOS devices don't get iOS updates either but they tend to get updates in a larger time frame than Android devices.

Close to rooting my phone so I can at least get Gingerbread on it. Will not solve all my issues but I could delete the apps I don't care about T-Mobile and Samsung shoved on there.

I downloaded the Jelly Bean SDK, tools and updated Eclipse today. I like the new Eclipse look, more modern but still clean leaving most screen space for coding. Don't have any Jelly Bean apps in mind but I like to keep my tools up to date. At least with Android I am able to target old and new SDK versions without an OS upgrade and a multiple gig download of an IDE I don't care for to keep working with my devices.

Monday will be the Lion upgrade and Xcode upgrade on the MacBook Pro. Then I can finally test my new iPad app on the actual device to make sure the UI is responsive. The simulator shows my paint / scrolling code to be very fast but the simulator is in now way a reflection on what happens on the device as far as speed is concerned. I really wish you could tweak its speed to be realistic.

Why Lion and not Mountain Lion? We will upgrade to Mountain Lion but I know the servers are going to be hammered when it is released. I can do Lion now so I can get Xcode updated allowing me to test the code on the iPad then when things have calmed down, some reviews have been published and maybe an update or two occurs we will go Mountain Lion.

I am running the MacBook Pro with and extended desktop onto a second screen. I have the simulator and Xcode running on the second screen but anytime I change the emulator - zooming or orientation - it pops back over the main laptop screen. That is crap way of doing things and very annoying. Leave the window on the screen where the user placed it. The simulator also paints odd at times. Not the app area but the border area they draw to make it look like the iPad. I am unimpressed with the Apple developers tools.