For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you already know that I have started building ROMs for the Motorola Xoom. I will be discussing these builds and others in a post soon. Today I'd like to remind the Verizon Xoom owners about the free 4G upgrade that is available and hopefully clear up some confusion in the process.
Earlier this month, Verizon sent out a reminder email stating "Last Chance For A Free 4G Upgrade". It went on to say that time is indeed running out and that if you act now, they will throw in a free dock. Regardless of these incentives, let's go over the reasons why you need to send your device in.
Google recently announced that the Motorola Xoom is fully supported "out of the box" by AOSP. In other words, custom ROMs from source can be built for it, as with Nexus devices. Unfortunately, only the 4G Verizon Xoom and Wi-Fi Xoom is supported. The 3G Xooms that have yet to be upgraded, will not be able to utilize the buffet of ROMs that are soon to come.
Even if your Xoom is not currently active (does not have a data plan), you can still send it in for the upgrade! My Xoom has not been active for nearly 8 months, even during the time I sent it in for the upgrade. Some of you may have purchased your Verizon Xoom used and may not be an actual Verizon customer, your device can still be upgraded for free as well. The upgrade process is done via Motorola, not Verizon.
It's only natural for us to want bigger and better things. At some point you may want to sell your Verizon Xoom to purchase a newer tablet. Resale value will be much lower on a non-upgraded 3G Xoom, especially once the upgrade window closes. So do your wallet a favor and send it in asap.
The entire upgrade process is quite easy. For starters, head over to the upgrade form on Motorola's website. Once completed, you will receive a package with instructions on how to send it in. Remember, this entire process is free, all the shipping is paid for in advance. Once shipped, the process only takes a few days. By the end of the week you can be running my ROM!
Update: If your Verizon Xoom currently is rooted or is running a custom ROM, I would advise flashing it back to its factory state before sending it in for the upgrade. To do so, download the latest "Software Images" from my downloads page and flash each using fastboot and relock the bootloader.
Screen shot of the email after the break.
