Motorola’s MOTOBLUR ALL CAPS USER INTERFACE LAYER will be coming to the Xoom, it seems, though early indications are that the tablet will ship with vanilla Honeycomb on it. Wow, that sounds sticky.
Update: Marin Perez claims on Twitter that Motorola has denied Blur is coming to the tablet, and that it will be a Google experience device.
This is all according to Moto’s European director of Android product management, Jonathan Nattrass (his cards must be a mile long), who stated that they still plan to bring the “social aspect” to Android. I’m not sure what “social aspect” is lacking from 3.0, though, which looks like it’s got the social thing pretty much sewn up:
Now, I wouldn’t say that I’m prejudiced against Blur (which I am not going to capitalize any longer), but it doesn’t add much functionality (the widgets are so-so) and it affects performance significantly. I really liked the Defy, but there was no reason for it to have Blur; in fact, it would have done better with a carrier-sponsored package of “outdoorsy” apps and widgets. And as “social” is increasingly crossed with “location,” a full-size tablet like the Xoom is really a poor match for such a customization. Especially when all the social web apps are fully accessible in the browser.
It’s supposed to come as a software update, though, so let’s hope we’re able to opt out.
[via Crave UK]
