Sencha’s HTML5 Developer Scorecard for the Motorola Xoom

Aditya Bansod:

Like we did with the Samsung Galaxy Tab we’re going to put the Xoom through the wringer, focusing on the browser to see how it performs and behaves for the mobile HTML5 developer. The short answer? The Xoom browser is not ready for prime-time — even for “HTML4” — and it urgently needs a patch update if Motorola wants the product to succeed.

Performance looks great, and it seems very capable at browsing typical websites. What Sencha is looking at are HTML5 and CSS 3 features, and treating the tablet as a mobile web app target. Sounds rushed to market, too:

We found consistent and reproducible issues in CSS3 Animations and CSS3 Transitions among other things. We had issues where the browser either hung or crashed. Regular scrolling was slow or below full framerate. We had issues where media playback failed or performed incorrectly. At times it felt like we were using a preproduction device, but we bought our test device from a Verizon Wireless store.

★ Monday, 7 March 2011