Apparently, when Motorola was trying to figure out why its Xoom has struggled so mightily in against the iPad 2, the company didn’t focus on its high starting price or slightly heftier hardware. Instead, it decided the issue was the screen — in particular the format — and rumor has it that Moto is working on a new tablet (probably not the Xoom 2 we’ve glimpsed) that ditches the 16:9 ratio for the more square 4:3 found on Apple’s slate. Supposedly the non-widescreen device will sport an extremely pixel-dense 2048 x 1536, 10-inch display and run Ice Cream Sandwich when it lands later this year or early next. We’re not entirely convinced this will pan out and, honestly, we’ve always preferred the more more modern widescreen format — but, if the iPad sells with it’s old-school ratio we suppose it’s worth a shot.
Motorola rumored to be hard at work on high-res, 4:3 Ice Cream Sandwich tablet originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:42:00 EST.
I’m curious why you prefer the widescreen format? It’s fine for movies I suppose but for everything else (reading books, playing games, surfing websites, etc.) I much prefer the 4:3 ratio and hate the widescreen aspect ratio for the loss in either screen height or width depending on which way I’m holding the screen.
Corey
I actually prefer the 4:3 as well – in a tablet, anyways, and only if I’m not viewing a widescreen video. On a computer, I prefer the widescreen for web development and graphic design.