Ina Fried

Recent Posts by Ina Fried

Motorola Xoom Owners Still Waiting for That 4G Upgrade

When Motorola announced the Xoom at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, CEO Sanjay Jha promised that the Honeycomb tablet would be upgradeable to 4G technology by the end of June.

However, as Xoom owners have noticed, that initial deadline has now come and gone, with no upgrade made available to those who have the Verizon Wireless tablet. In case they missed it (as I clearly did), Motorola noted on an earnings call that the Xoom upgrade has been pushed out just a bit.

A Verizon representative said the upgrade should be available later this summer.

Unlike software updates that can be sent over the air, the upgrade to 4G support will require Xoom owners to send in their tablets, a process that Verizon has detailed on its Web site. Users are advised to back up and then delete all personal information on the device.

“The 4G LTE upgrade process should not delete content previously stored on your Xoom,” Verizon said. “However, if the device is lost or damaged during upgrade, you will lose all data not transferred.”

Making the delay even more irksome to consumers, Verizon is now taking preorders for a different Honeycomb tablet with 4G support out of the box — the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

(Update, 8:10 a.m.: This story was updated to note that Motorola had previously noted that the Xoom 4G upgrade was being delayed from its original deadline.)

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There’s a lot of attention and PR around Marissa, but their product lineup just kind of blows.

— Om Malik on Bloomberg TV, talking about Yahoo, the September issue of Vogue Magazine, and our overdependence on Google