The biggest differences between the two tablets are their respective operating systems. While Android 3.0 will be familiar to the millions of people with Android phones, the overall feel is somewhat different. The extra real estate of the large screen provides great flexibility, and the true multi-tasking provides even more. While the iPad 2 can do some multi-tasking, it's mostly limited to playing music while you do something else. The Xoom allows you to run multiple apps at the same time. You can, of course, also play music while doing something else as you can on the iPad.
The Android OS also implements multi-touch in subtly different ways. For example, if you display a map you can zoom in and out by pinching and spreading your fingers, just as you can on the iPad or any other multi-touch display. The difference is that you can also rotate the image by placing your fingers on the image and twisting. This is especially handy if you want to find your way through an area, and you want to orient the image to match your direction of travel.
Android gives you access to the Android Market where there are thousands of applications, but the selection of Xoom apps is somewhat limited. However Android doesn't restrict you to only finding apps in the Android Market. You can get them from anywhere you want. Apple has many more apps in the App Store, but you have to get your apps from there.
While Android widely supports Adobe Flash, which is a significant advantage, Flash for the Xoom was not available during the time the device was being tested. According to information from Motorola, this software will ship on March 18. The other still-to-be-implemented items are apparently further from reality.
The other significant difference that turned up in the review is the automatic screen rotation when you change the orientation of the device. For example, if you rotate the Xoom from landscape to portrait mode, there's a significant delay before the screen rotates to match. This delay measured an average 2.3 seconds. The delay in rotating the image to match the device orientation on the iPad 2 was well under a half second. It's unclear whether this delay difference was due to the Android OS or to the hardware that reports orientation to the operating system.
