"The Xoom browser is not ready for prime-time -- even for 'HTML4,'" writes Aditya Bansod, a software engineer with Sencha, a vendor that created the HTML5 application framework for mobile Web apps. "And it urgently needs a patch update if Motorola wants the product to succeed."

EARLY REVIEWS:

Bansod's conclusion comes in a blog post that details the results of a series of tests to see how the Xoom browser conforms to, and performs with, emerging Web standards such as HTML5 and Cascading Style Sheets 3 (CSS 3). The results, for both developers and consumers, are not encouraging.

It's a surprising result, because Motorola has been touting the Xoom, the first to deploy 3.0 (or "Honeycomb"), as the first "real" Android tablet. The 3.0 version was specifically designed for the tablet device class.

The complete evaluation is online at .