Motorola Xoom price revealed, already zooming skywards

The hotly anticipated Motorola Xoom has been slapped with its first price sticker. Android Community reports that UK site Handtec has the tablet available for pre-order -- but it hasn't quite made its mind up how much it'll cost. That report shows the price as £660, but it's now zoomed up to £720.

The site reveals that the tablet is "due in soon". If the price keeps creeping skywards, heck knows how much it'll cost by the time it's actually in stock.

Let's hope we're not in for another round of price-juggling like the to-ing and fro-ing we saw before the Samsung Galaxy Tab went on sale, with prices constantly compared to the market-leading Apple iPad. Handtec was obviously paying attention to the debate generated among CNET UK readers and around the Web, so maybe this is a savvy PR stunt for a shopping site rather than a realistic indication of the Xoom's final price.

The 10.1-inch Xoom is one of the first to run Android 3.0 Honeycomb. Honeycomb is fronted by a new interface that's more suited to a tablet's large screen than previous Androids, which were designed for small-screened smart phones. Features include drag and drop app groups. Apps, ebooks, YouTube videos and other bits of media are displayed in a nifty carousel that looks like it's rotating in 3D. The redesigned browser boasts tabbed browsing and Flash video support.

The Xoom was named Best in Show at CES by our chums at CNET.com. It packs a dual-core processor, 3G, 802.11n Wi-Fi, two USB ports, an SD card, HDMI and 32GB of storage. It adds a 2-megapixel camera for video calling and 5-megapixel camera for proper snapping and video, with two LED photo lights.

In other words, it has just about every whistle and bell you can fit in a tablet. So how much would you pay for all this Xoom goodness? Is it worth more than an iPad? At £720 is the price right? Give us your shouts of "higher!" or "lower!" in the comments.