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Being the first Honeycomb tablet puts a lot of pressure on you to perform well. When you’re an overweight, bulky powerhouse from the same company that brought Android into the spotlight with the Droid, that expectation to be great is a little intensified. When you consider that the Xoom was essentially released as an unfinished product, put into the hands of consumers with the expectation of future upgrades that included a functioning SD slot and LTE support, the Xoom seemed to many like a sinking ship as competing tablets began to surface. We’ve long since passed the 90-day mark that Verizon and Motorola issued as the point in which these issues would be fixed, and now it seems there might be a less-than-great reason for the delay. Coupled with rumors of mediocre sales and the announcement that the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 will be on Verizon sporting LTE, a video from Verizon has cropped up with whispers of a sequel to the Xoom, dubbed the Xoom 4G, that is on its way.

If you haven’t stopped reading to go start a Canucks loss style rampage on your town, here’s what we know. This device is more than likely (as in, all but definitely) the tablet we saw on those leaked images of the Motorola website awhile back. Motorola had dubbed that tablet the Xoom 2 on the website leaks, but apparently the device will be called the Xoom 4G on Verizon wireless. It’s possible, given Sprint’s recent rekindling with Motorola, that the Xoom 2 name will pop up again on their network, but that’s just speculation. The Xoom 4G is the next in Motorola’s line of tablets, and as the name suggests, it’s coming with LTE ready to roll.
From the video, we can spot a few interesting things. For starters, the camera placement, Verizon Logo placement, and the way in which the woman in the commercial is holding the device leads you to believe that the tablet has been built to be much more portrait friendly, maybe even portrait preferred. The Xoom 4G doesn’t seem to be terribly thinner than the Xoom around the bezel, but it seems to be flat all the way across instead of bulged in the middle. Coupled with the softer corners, it seems like the device will be lighter and easier to hold for extended periods of time. The front of the device seems to be completely computer-generated, which tells me that the apparent lack of a front facing camera is simply due to an incomplete render, but it’s anyone’s guess at this point.
So, has Verizon given up on the Xoom? Will the Xoom 4G come out before the Xoom gets the upgrades it deserves? Will there be a trade-in program where you can trade in your not-quite-done tablet for what Motorola should have released the first go ’round? Hopefully these questions and more will be answered in the coming weeks!

Via: Android and Me