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Ice Cream Sandwich OTA rolling out for Motorola Xyboard’s in the U.S.

Motorola seems to be kicking up their efforts to push out updates to their devices over the last few weeks. The latest set of devices to finally see some Ice Cream Sandwich goodness are the WiFi only Motorola Xyboards in both the 10.1-inch and 8.2-inch variety. That should make some of you smile on this slow going Monday morning. The update will move your Xyboard to Android 4.0.4 but the Blur versions will different. The 10.1 will get Blur 3.11.26.MZ615 and the 8.2 version gets Blur 14.11.26.MZ607. Not sure why the difference, but it probably has something to do with screen size. Here is a pretty nice little list that Motorola laid out for us about all the wonders of the update.

All Motorola XYBOARD 10.1 and 8.2 WIFI users.

After downloading and installing the software release, you will notice:

Enhancements:

  • Updated Browser with faster rendering, zoom and pan: Users can also now save pages for offline reading and request desktop versions of websites.
  • Swipe to dismiss notifications and recent apps: You can now dismiss individual notifications and apps from the Recent Apps list with a simple swipe of a finger.
  • Redesigned app launcher: In All Apps launcher, you can now simply drag an app to get information about it, immediately uninstall it, or disable a pre-installed app.
  • New System Font for Improved Readability: An entirely new typeface (called Roboto) optimized for high-resolution screens improves readability and brings a polished feel to the user interface.
  • Updated “People” Application: Replaces contacts and integrates seamlessly with Google+ and other social networks.
  • Improved text input and spell-checking: The keyboard now features improved accuracy to make text input faster. It also now includes an in-line spell checker to make corrections easier.
  • Type with your voice: Now you can simply touch the microphone on the keyboard and start talking to write emails, or any other text—more than 20 languages supported. Text appears in real-time, so there’s no waiting for server processing.
  • Richer and versatile imaging capabilities: For new flexibility and convenience while shooting video, you can now take snapshots at full video resolution just by tapping the screen as video continues to record. For capturing larger scenes, the camera introduces a single motion panorama mode. You can also launch camera directly from the Lockscreen. When you shoot videos, you can now choose from a number of silly faces and other fun effects which recognize individual facial features so you can give your friends big eyes, squeeze heads, make noses bigger, or change the scenery with background replacement.
  • Redesigned Gallery app with photo editor: To help pictures look their best, the Gallery now offers a powerful photo editor so you can crop and rotate pictures, set levels, remove red eyes, add effects, and much more.
  • Richer, resizable widgets: You can expand widgets to show more content, or shrink them to save space.
  • Quicker screen rotation
  • A new setting to choose whether the power button immediately locks the device or not: shows up only when you have a pattern, PIN or password lock, it then lets you set a timer for how long it takes to lock after pressing the sleep button.
  • Microsoft Exchange improvements with additional EAS policies
  • Improved stability
  • Face Unlock: Face Unlock is a new screen-lock option that lets you unlock your device with your face. It takes advantage of the device front-facing camera and state-of-the-art facial recognition technology to register a face during setup and then to recognize it again when unlocking the device. Just hold your device in front of your face to unlock, or use back up PIN or pattern.

You can receive the update over a Wi-Fi connection. If you are not connected via Wi-Fi, or your Motorola XYBOARD is off when the notification arrives, you will see the notification when you next connect to a Wi-Fi network.

So make sure your tablet is charged up and get ready to make the jump to the next Android OS version available. Ya, we know, you were hoping for Jelly Bean, maybe next year.

Source: Motorola via GOAndroid