The uncanny valley is the idea, posed by a Japanese robotics professor, that as humanoid robots start to resemble us more and more, we warm to them. But there’s a point where sudden repulsion kicks in: the more they look like us, the more we realise they don’t.
It’s like playing Fallout 3, and being grossed out by the NPC’s freaky frown lines, or LA Noire and wondering why every female character’s hair appears to be made of papier mache. It isn’t human.
It’s precisely what’s wrong with Android tablets like the Motorola Xoom 2. Honeycomb is starting to resemble a viable tablet option, but it still doesn’t feel quite right.
It’s not that the 10.1-inch Motorola Xoom 2 is a bad tablet. It’s so nondescript that any criticisms I have about it are equally true of any and every Android Honeycomb tablet so far.
It’s thin, it’s light, it’s a boring black slab. And that’s OK. Let’s be honest, the iPad 2 is a pretty dull device too, opting for the shiny metal back of an iPod touch from yesteryear, rather than the premium aluminium finish of Apple’s Macs. It’s just crazy thin, with the same sharp 1280×800 screen as the first Xoom. It’s an IPS panel this time around, but we’d still pick the iPad 2 or Asus Eee Pad Transformer over it for their more vivid, viscous colours.
The design language isn’t any better than the original Xoom from earlier this year, it’s just different. The trimmed corners recall the rather ugly new Motorola Razr, and don’t make it any more comfortable to hold.
Motorola’s had the sense to include a micro HDMI socket, and let you charge the Motorola Xoom 2 through a micro USB socket – most other Honeycomb tablets require you to lug around a custom power brick, severely diminishing their convenience and actual portability. But other build issues leave you with the sense this was constructed by frighteningly intelligent algorithms, rather than people.
The power button for instance, is located on the right side next to the volume keys. A robot would decide it makes perfect sense for them all to be located near your fingers. A human would use the Motorola Xoom 2, and point out that they all feel identical and thus equally, fiendishly hard to press. Why would you buy a tablet that’s difficult to turn on and off?
Then there’s this mysterious flap. What the hell is it? It’s just a flap. There’s nothing inside it. There’s no SIM card slot – Motorola isn’t yet planning a 3G version of the Xoom 2 – and it’s certainly not a micro SD slot (The Motorola Xoom 2 has 16GB of internal storage and that’s your lot. Deal with it.) It’s just a flap.
The tablet world has moved on an enormous amount since the Xoom was first released in February. More than one tablet platform has been born, lived and expired in that time. But Honeycomb is still Honeycomb, and version 3.2 is as incremental as it sounds.
Don’t get me wrong. I like the basic premise of Honeycomb. The browser is as close to Chrome as you could get without legitimately badging it up as such. Switching between apps is simply a case of tapping the multitasking icon in the bottom left. Its notification system, though no longer revolutionary, is still subtle and easy to use.
But there’s something eery about it. Something uncanny, that leaves me wondering, longing for the common sense of Ice Cream Sandwich and Matias Duarte’s level head and ability to actually think like someone who doesn’t work at Google.
It’s little things. Google hasn’t ported all of it services across properly. Videos, the movie rental service for instance, isn’t available on Honeycomb tablets in the UK for reasons unknown. Dive into Google Street View on Google Maps and you’ll even be told that Google hasn’t bothered to optimise it for tablets, so like it or lump it.
Motorola’s own additions don’t seem particularly interesting either. An ever present app in the taskbar lets you draw notes and save them or send them to Evernote, but there’s no denying this is basically Microsoft Paint for Android. It’s not a good idea: whenever OEMs try this I just end up drawing internet memes instead of writing a shopping list.
Want to take a note? Just actually use Evernote, for God’s sake, don’t try and write with your fingertip on a capacitive touchscreen.
While you’re at it Motorola, don’t leave Honeycomb largely untampered with only to include a few shortcuts to stuff you might want to possibly download if you’re so dull that you just download things because Motorola suggest you might like them. There’s a Motoactv shortcut in the menu you can’t remove, and all it does is dump you on a promotional website. It’ll always be there.
It’s big things too of course. Finding Honeycomb apps is a nightmare. Nobody seems to be bothered about the platform. Services seem more fussed about making sure their apps work at Honeycomb’s resolution, rather than crafting them to really work.
Sonos is a great example of this: the iPad app is an iPad app, but the Honeycomb app is just an Android app. Until more companies grasp the difference, or feel the economic need to, that’s not going to change.
Once again, my analogy: a robot – or someone who works for BlackBerry – would decide that the solution is scaling apps to fit the resolution. A human would tell you that pixels are only one way to measure screen size.
I wonder how much Ice Cream Sandwich will address these problems on tablets. On a 4.65-inch screen, it works wonders, but can a new font and better notifications really rescue a tablet OS whose problem isn’t notifications? The Motorola Xoom 2 is scheduled to get this update at some point in the space-time continuum, but I’m not sure it’s worth waiting for Godot when you can bet Ice Cream Sandwich slates will be unveiled at CES in just a few weeks’ time.
Either way, the problem remains. All the parts are here. Fast OS, thin chassis, competent camera, reasonable battery life. So why don’t I want to pick it up, use it and take it everywhere with me? A tablet should be tactile, a tablet should be human, but right now, Android is still an android.
