Difference Between Motorola Xyboard 10.1 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Sometimes you have to choose a gadget over another to invest. Sometimes you look at different tablets and integrate features from one to another in your mind and hope that such a tablet would come to the market soon. Sometimes, you can’t wait, so you invest in the best suited tab in your perspective, but yet you will be sad about the opportunity cost or the forgone tablets so to rephrase it. Well, you can say good bye to all those times spent looking at tablets because your ideal version of the tablet comes in several flavors. Let’s get down to these two tablets, Motorola Xyboard 10.1 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, that we are going to compare here and show you how close they are to your dream tablet.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is yet another addition to much reputed Galaxy family of Samsung. This was identified as the best candidate against iPad 2 when it was released, but not so much now, because Galaxy Tab 10.1 was released in July 2011, and Droid Xyboard 10.1 from Motorola was released by December 2011, with advanced specifications. This is a generic advantage Motorola Droid Xyboard 10.1 has because it was announced only in December 2011, but then, penetration pricing scheme means it would have a higher price, as well. That is as much as we can say on that perspective, let’s get more technical and find out which beats which.

Motorola Droid Xyboard 10.1

Motorola Droid Xyboard 10.1 is actually the same as Motorola Droid Xoom 2 with some hardware modifications. It comes on Verizon taking the maximum out of LTE 700 speeds. This is the spectacular fact about the tablets nowadays; they use state of the art infrastructure. Motorola Droid Xyboard 10.1 is one of the very few tablets having LTE connectivity, which differentiates it from the rest of the market. Been the successor of Xoom, it comes with the same design. It has a different look than normal tablets and has slightly cornered edges that are not so smooth like Galaxy Tab or iPad 2. This is actually intended to be a comfort to your hand if you’re holding the tablet for extended amounts of time, but the choice depends on personal preference because it kind of gives Xyboard 10.1 a weird look.

Xyboard 10.1 comes with 1.2GHz ARM Cortex A9 dual core processor on top of TI OMAP 4430 chipset and PowerVR SGX540 graphics unit. This setup gives superior performance combined with the 1GB RAM it comes with. The Android v3.2 Honeycomb entails that fact and gives smooth controls to the tablet. The best thing is, Motorola has promised an upgrade to Android v4.0 IceCreamSandwich in the near future. It comes with 10.1 HD IPS LCD Capacitive touchscreen that features a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. The 149ppi pixel density makes the screen exactly same as Galaxy Tab 10.1 except the panel type. As usual, the panel comes with Corning Gorilla Glass reinforcement, to make it scratch-resistant. Xyboard is slightly larger and bulkier than Galaxy Tab where it scores 259.9 x 173.6 mm in dimensions and a thickness of 8.8mm and a weight of 599g. But the black metallic machine feels good in your hand and rather gives an expensive look.

Motorola has ported Xyboard 10.1 with a 5MP camera with autofocus and LED flash that can capture HD videos in 720p. It also has a front facing camera together with Bluetooth v2.1 for the use of video conferencing. The camera also comes with Geo-tagging feature with the support of A-GPS. As we’ve mentioned earlier, the best part of Xyboard 10.1 is that it comes with GSM connectivity or CDMA connectivity and features LTE 700 for super-fast internet. It’s fascinating how vendors adapt to new technologies. It’s a big deal to have LTE 700 connectivity today, but in a couple of months, it’ll be quite normal to have. But in any case, both Xyboard and Galaxy Tab have a competitive advantage in this end. It also features Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n connectivity with the ability to act as a wi-fi hotspot. The Xyboard 10.1 comes in 3 storage options, 16/32/64GB without an option to expand the storage using a microSD card. Besides the normal set of sensors in a tablet, Xyboard 10.1 also comes with a Barometer. The battery life is also impressive in Xyboard which gives 10 hours of playback time.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

As Xyboard 10.1, Galaxy Tab 10.1 is another successor of Galaxy family too. It was released to the market in July 2011 and at the time, was the best competition for Apple iPad 2. It comes in black and has a pleasing and expensive look with the desire to keep it in your hand. Galaxy Tab is even thinner than Xyboard 10.1 scoring a mere 8.6mm, which is awesome for a tablet PC. Galaxy Tab is also lightweight with a weight of 565g. It has a 10.1 inch PLS TFT Capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 1280 x 800 and 149ppi pixel density. The screen is also reinforced with Corning Gorilla glass, to make it scratch-resistant.

It comes with a 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 dual core processor on top of NvidiaTegra 2 chipset and Nvidia ULP GeForce graphics unit, which tends to be more powerful than the PowerVR unit. The 1GB RAM is a due addition to this setup, which is controlled by Android v3.2 Honeycomb, and Samsung promises an upgrade to Android v4.0 IceCreamSandwich, as well. It comes with two storage options, 16/32GB without an option to expand the storage. Unfortunately, Samsung Galaxy Tab LTE version does not come with GSM connectivity although it has CDMA connectivity. On the other hand, it has LTE 700 connectivity for super-fast internet and Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n for continuous connectivity. Since it also supports Wi-Fi hotspot functionality, you can handsomely share your super speed internet with your friends. As mentioned above, been released In July and having LTE 700 connectivity, certainly helped it a lot to gain the market share it has gained through this 5 months, and we have to say that Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a mature product you can rely on.

Samsung has included a 3.15MP camera with autofocus and LED flash, but this rather seems inadequate for the tablet. Fortunately it can capture 720p HD videos @ 30 frames per second and for the delight of the video callers, it has a front camera of 2MP bundled together with Bluetooth v2.1. It comes with the normal sensor set for the Galaxy family and has a predicted battery life of 9 hours which is lower than the Motorola Droid Xyboard.

Conclusion

The conclusion is pretty easy to come up with between these two giants because, in terms of overall performance, both tablets are the same, although Motorola Droid Xyboard has a slightly fast CPU, which is been compensated by the chipset and the tweaks made by Samsung. Motorola Droid Xyboard feels so out of the box with the shape it has, but if you get to use it for extended amounts of times continuously, you may feel the difference. On the other hand, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is just the correct size and feels home in your hands even for extended amounts of time. Motorola Droid Xyboard does feature a better camera than Samsung Galaxy tab, so if you are looking at that as a feature, you will be better off with Motorola Droid Xyboard. Other than that, a good plus point for Motorola Droid Xyboard is the extended battery life. But the fact is, the package comes with a higher cost than that of Galaxy Tab. So it all comes down to the investment you’re ready to make. For what it’s worth, we can guarantee that both are well worth for the investments you’re going to make on them thinking they are just like your dream Tablets.