Telstra announces Motorola Xoom 2, $720 outright

Motorola’s original Xoom tablet was exciting thanks to the fact it was the world’s first real iPad competitor, despite the fact it hardly made a dent in iPad sales. Its successor looks to pick up the fight where the original Xoom left off, launching today on Telstra for $720 outright.

With a more vibrant 10.1 inch screen made from Corning’s Gorilla Glass and packing a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, the Xoom 2 is running the 3.2 Honeycomb version of Android (although an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) is promised in the future) and comes with 32GB of integrated flash memory, which can be expanded to 64GB with a micro SD card.

Telstra is selling the tablet for $720 outright, or on a variety of 24 month contracts, starting at $49 a month including data and the device repayment. While it’s unlikely that the Xoom 2 is going to make any real impact on iPad sales – at least until the next operating system update to Ice Cream Sandwich – it’s good to see the tablet finally launch in Australia.

Price: $720 outright
Web: Telstra