In my testing of the Motorola XOOM I do a video chat call with Thunder E from Booredatwork.com
Connecting was very simple and fast using Google Talk with Video Chat which is a feature of Android 3.0′s Google Talk client. When using the client you are presented with a full screen of the person you are talking to and a small screen of yourself in the right hand corner. You get some simple controls for mute, messaging and swap cameras between front and rear. Above the small video box of you there is a slider for zoom. Its a pretty simple and basic interface. The Video from our end look pretty good on the XOOM screen and audio quality was excellent.
Thunder E commented that while it look good on the small window on his computer when he expanded it the video looked a bit blurry. This could be due to the cameras on the XOOM not as high quality as an external web cam or could be the video quality from Google which they may need to work on some more.
Unfortunately you can’t multi-task while in a video chat. Since Android promotes multitasking so much its a shame that you can’t while on a video chat. If you open up another application it will pause the video on the other end and pretty much make it a voice only chat until you come back to the application. Hopefully this is something they can work to add in the future. Also when Thunder E called from a laptop in the video and audio became choppy on both ends. We’re not sure if this is because of the laptop or software.
Overall it was a very good experience using the video chat. Simple and smooth for the most part. It can only improve from where its currently at. We hope to see more features and options in the next versions.
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