Motorola Xoom LTE Upgrade Ready in 90 Days; You’ll Need to Send Yours in

Brad Molen  By on 25 Feb 11

Good news: The Motorola Xoom, which launched yesterday as a 3G-only Android Honeycomb tablet, will definitely be LTE-compatible within 90 days.

Bad news: In order for the Xoom to get updated, it has to be sent in and you’ll be without your brand new Android friend for 6 days.

That’s right, folks. Presumably in an attempt to be the very first major OEM to release a Honeycomb tablet, a few things had to be put on hold, such as Flash 10.1 and hardware containing the 4G LTE chipset. Both of these things were largely hyped at the device’s announcement at CES and throughout the last month and a half, and as such are heavily desired by almost every early adopter that wants to buy a Xoom.

While Flash should easily be included in a basic firmware update, LTE is certainly not that easy to just throw in. In fact, to get the LTE capability Verizon has just officially announced the process of returning the device — yes, actually sending it in — free of charge in a FedEx package, and returned back to you within 6 days. Excuse me, I mean 6 business days.

In other words, a full week.

Yes, the end results will largely be worth it, but this type of process is unheard of. Not only will anyone purchasing a Xoom have to pay more than an iPad, they will have to part ways with their new favorite gadget voluntarily for a week in order to get it “fixed”. At least the process is free, right?

 

via Verizon’s official site

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  • Bob

    Price to high. Just have to wait until its 599. Bad move for Motorola.

  • Anonymous

    And this is exactly why people get excited about Apple products, like the iPad, to begin with. Apple would never dream of expecting customers to do something this moronic just so they could hype up a feature that wasn’t ready to go. Same with yesterday’s announcement that Flash wouldn’t be available for the Xoom at launch. When Apple hypes a product, it’s within days of release. This whole practice in tech of over-promising and under-delivering is a nightmare, and Motorola is turning into one of the most egregious offenders.

  • Seattle-man

    I am amazed that they cannot do the upgrade in your local cellular dealer’s backroom — what is the big deal about changing out a radio module? Unless, of course, the designers did not choose to make the device easy to maintain and upgrade, even for a planned upgrade like this one — if so, shame on them!

  • Picky Picky

    6 business days isn’t a week — it’s almost a week and a half, since it necessarily includes two days of weekend time. I mean… it’s not that long, really… but it’s not a week.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_35HF7MTZ3JKGYZHIBJRLSQE5XQ bmovie

    Hey, maybe you don’t need Flash anyway!

    Or you can wait 90 days (3 whole months) (late June/early July) to buy one,—after you hear what the iPad 2 has to offer.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_35HF7MTZ3JKGYZHIBJRLSQE5XQ bmovie

    If you’ve waited this long, maybe you can wait 3 more months to catch the eye of that female worker in the white hoodie!

  • Phoenix

    That’s why the high price, you are paying
    for the upgrade up front. The shoulded
    let people desired if they wanted to
    upgrade and paid the difference ?

  • Anonymous

    So motorola shipped an unfinished product just so they could launch before the iPad 2? With a high price and the hype of features that aren’t even readily available out of the box this will just set motorola back some. So what’s next?

  • Denni Grisorio

    i like motorola phone these are such good phone.
    http://advancedafricanmango.wordpress.com/

  • Anonymous

    I agree with Andrerichards… this is a moronic move.

    While providing the mod/upgrade free, people won’t bite. That’s because packing up, shipping and picking up the package (or making sure one is home to get the package), that all takes time out of one’s day. (I know lots of people who will not use FedEx: Because they don’t want stuff sent to where they work and/or they are not going to wait for a half a day at home for the FedEx truck).

    And this does not include there’s always risks that it can get lost in shipping (that FedEx or Verizon will blame on the Xoom owner), one will have to wipe their data before sending it in (a big hassle), and there’s always something that gets screwed up.

    This smacks of a mail-in rebate. Because of rebate abuses by retailers (onerous compliance requirements, late payment, simply not paying the rebates requiring months of follow-up by the consumer) most people are no longer interested in products with mail-in rebates. (I have even been screwed by major retailers, including T-Mobile, Microsoft and Norton.)

    Same with this, people will see the negatives associated with FedEx shipping and say “to heck with this thing.”

    What’s going to happen? Well… the Xoom is not such a compelling device the people will feel they have to have it now. They will simply wait to buy a tablet, if they get one at all, much less a Xoom.

    Sidenote: So let’s summarize…

    It’s a $600 subsidized tablet, a niche device, not an essential electronic.

    At best it is a limited, scaled down computer;

    More accurately it’s a fad; a glorified picture frame;

    Requires an over-priced Verizon data plan;

    That is even more crippled than we all thought.

    It’s supposedly a state-of-the-art a multi-media device that uh… can’t play a major source of one’s multi-media viewing, flash-enabled websites;

    And if one wants 4G, you have to deal with the risk and time consumption of sending it back to factory for a “4G” chipset.

    I previously opined in a December magazine article that even $250 carrier-based tablets will fail. At $600, with these limitations, the Xoom is, as the phrase goes, dead on arrival.

  • Cmantle101

    i have the xoom and I am responding to this post on a xooom that I will be returning because of all of these missing features. Not to mention the xoom has very few apps ready yet. Hopefully this will change in 90 days. Thisproduct doesn’t even support SD card reading I’m really disaapointed that its is just unfinished.

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