Motorola Xoom Will Not Get 4G LTE Until Late Summer

[dgstorm]

Sadly, it looks like even the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G LTE version will come "out of the box" with actual 4G LTE capability before the Motorola Xoom's will be available for upgrade. Earlier today CEO Sanjay Jha confirmed the end of summer schedule at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2011 Technology Conference. Here's what he said,

“We are late with 4G LTE on Verizon’s network,” Jha said before finishing off with a reminder of the statement he made during their last earnings call, “We will deliver LTE solutions this summer.”

Verizon and Motorola originally planned for the Xoom upgrade to occur at the end of May or June, but they ran into technical issues. Later on in the talks, Mr. Jha, indirectly indicated these problems may have been because of NVIDIA's Tegra 2 Chip.

Rumor in the industry has suggested that the Tegra 2 chip has had serious problems with LTE radios. Here is a quote from the Droid-Life article detailing some of Mr. Jha's comments for you to "read between the lines" yourselves,

He did sort of take blame for the delay though and dropped this little nugget today, “We were delayed on two 4G products because of network interaction issues with our protocol stack.”

The odd thing is, that just 30 seconds later when asked how they can prevent such a delay from happening again, Jha made reference to having burned bridges and “betting everything on one place.” We can only assume he’s referring to their decision to go with NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 processor (which has been rumored to not cooperate with 4G LTE radios) rather than TI’s new OMAP or Qualcomm’s new dual-core, because as he continued he talked of working with all chipset manufacturers going forward so that they have fallback plans.

It was an odd talk, and one that clearly painted Motorola in a falling behind the curve pack. They have now been beaten to the 4G LTE wave by HTC, Samsung and LG in phones and are about to be in tablets as well. They better hope the Bionic knocks all of our socks off or it’s going to be one long year for our friends that brought us the original DROID.

The folks over at Droid-Life had a good "read" on his comments. It'll be interesting to see if the rumors about Tegra 2 problems turn out to be true, and, if NVIDIA can't fix them quickly enough, how quickly the smartphone and tablet manufacturers start moving to Texas Instruments or Qualcomm.

Of course, that really still leaves Xoom owners "out in the cold" until the end of the summer if they want 4G LTE, regardless. What a major misstep by Motorola, one that may not have been completely their fault, but sometimes that happens in the technology world. Being the first one out the door with a new product isn't always the best way. What do you guys think?

Source: XoomForums.com via Droid-Life

 

[alant40]

And this is why I purchased the 32GB wifi model from Best Buy. I'll use my 4g mobile connect through my Thunderbolt! Hopefully, they get the SD card slot working in this decade!!

 

[vzdroid13]

That's really not fair. A few months ago, Jha said that 4g was what justified the Xoom's high price, and now it doesn't even have it. They should give Xoom owners unlimited LTE plus tethering if/ when 4g does come.

Sent from my SCH-I510 using DroidForums

 

[kodiak799]

I'd be returning my Xoom. Defective product or false advertising, as far as I'm concerned. 6 months is an eternity in the tech world. To have charged a premium because of the LTE capability and then have other devices out months ahead of it is unacceptable.

 

[UNC]

I'd be returning my Xoom. Defective product or false advertising, as far as I'm concerned. 6 months is an eternity in the tech world. To have charged a premium because of the LTE capability and then have other devices out months ahead of it is unacceptable.

+1,000,000


The reason its end of summer is because he's hoping by then the 15 people who have Xoom's will forget about the LTE.... I guess they'll have you send it in and they'll replace the T2 with a TI chip and install the LTE radio???? If LTE/T2 is such a bad marriage that the Bionic had to be completely reworked, I don't see how they could possibly work it out by the end of summer.....

 

[Augie]

I'd be returning my Xoom. Defective product or false advertising, as far as I'm concerned. 6 months is an eternity in the tech world. To have charged a premium because of the LTE capability and then have other devices out months ahead of it is unacceptable.

+1,000,000


The reason its end of summer is because he's hoping by then the 15 people who have Xoom's will forget about the LTE.... I guess they'll have you send it in and they'll replace the T2 with a TI chip and install the LTE radio???? If LTE/T2 is such a bad marriage that the Bionic had to be completely reworked, I don't see how they could possibly work it out by the end of summer.....

That would be wishful thinking to swap out the chip from the T2 to TI but lets be honest they will just keep up waiting. Eventually they will release a Xoom2 with TI chip and LTE radio and we will still be stuck with a 3G Xoom.

I just want to know how the Galaxy Tab is releasing with the same chip as the xoom and has the ability to run LTE?

 

[patfactorx]

I almost thought this was going to be Motorola's year for having the first H comb tablet and for inventing the laptop dock but their execution was pretty fail this year =0(

 

[UNC]

I'd be returning my Xoom. Defective product or false advertising, as far as I'm concerned. 6 months is an eternity in the tech world. To have charged a premium because of the LTE capability and then have other devices out months ahead of it is unacceptable.

+1,000,000


The reason its end of summer is because he's hoping by then the 15 people who have Xoom's will forget about the LTE.... I guess they'll have you send it in and they'll replace the T2 with a TI chip and install the LTE radio???? If LTE/T2 is such a bad marriage that the Bionic had to be completely reworked, I don't see how they could possibly work it out by the end of summer.....

That would be wishful thinking to swap out the chip from the T2 to TI but lets be honest they will just keep up waiting. Eventually they will release a Xoom2 with TI chip and LTE radio and we will still be stuck with a 3G Xoom.

I just want to know how the Galaxy Tab is releasing with the same chip as the xoom and has the ability to run LTE?

I have no idea how Sammy is coming out with a T2/LTE device, but I won't buy it. MOTO had to rework the Bionic at the last minute and it was supposed to be the flagship device... We will find out how the GTab runs. I think the battery life will be atrocious, personally. Texas Instruments and Qualcomm make better chips because they also both make many other components... Qualcomm makes tons and tons of radios for example, and TI makes things like the DSP on every phone.

 

[carlz28]

I almost thought this was going to be Motorola's year for having the first H comb tablet and for inventing the laptop dock but their execution was pretty fail this year =0(

+1
I bought the 3G XOOM without a contract just because I wanted the device and didn't want to wait until the wifi only version came out. With the prospects of upgrading to 4G for a potential future selling point should I decide to get rid of the device, having the 4G capability would help me get a few more $$$ for it. Guess I'll be keeping the tablet for awhile to make up for that loss
Honestly, with the first iteration of Honeycomb, I wan't that impressed with the device. But I attribute that to Google..not Moto.
Lack of "official" SD card support and no LTE option yet, I blame that on Moto!
While the tablet is a good device, the hardware specs should be blowing away the competiton....and it's not. Lot's of poor planning/research/marketing from Moto. It pails in comparison to Moto's launch of the OG Droid phone.
The XOOM had the potential to set the standard of all current gen. tablets, IMO, but the execution was fatally flawed.

 

[Dusty]

This is exactly what moto deserves for FORCING the 3G/4G Xoom instead of releasing the wifi model that customers were begging for at release.

I have a wifi Xoom that I love and am using to respond to this post right now. I will fully admit that it's the laughing stock of tablets because of the horrible way in which it was handled from jump. From the back-shelf treatment in the stores, the crappy ads, to the half baked capabilities (see SD card). It is the poster child for a good product that suffers from fourth rate PR/marketing, and a series of front office decisions that would make lawn darts an easier sell.

It's hard to defend a product that I like so much that was handled so poorly by all parties involved.

 

[DroidMastar2]

Is anyone as annoyed as me at Motorola and all of their... well... lies?!?!

 

[Underscore_Hero]

I don't really care if my xoom has 4g or not, it's a wifi one... But I understand the frustration for many other users who purchased the contracts and such. In the tech world, **** happens, and the consumer gets the short straw. I feel xoom users still got a solid device that they enjoy,albiet no 4g, but that's why we love android, 4g tethering!

 

[yurdle]

this doesn't bother me much as my xoom isn't on contract, so I'm not even using the 3g. That, and Motorola gave my family(My dad really) the Xoom for free

 

[UNC]

this doesn't bother me much as my xoom isn't on contract, so I'm not even using the 3g. That, and Motorola gave my family(My dad really) the Xoom for free

Can't argue with free!!!!

 

[yurdle]

this doesn't bother me much as my xoom isn't on contract, so I'm not even using the 3g. That, and Motorola gave my family(My dad really) the Xoom for free

Can't argue with free!!!!

for sure lol I mean the reasoning for getting it isn't the best.. but still we are all happy with it.