ASUS has used 2012’s Mobile World Congress to officially launch what could be its most ambitious and intriguing product yet – the Padfone. The Padfone combines a top-end smartphone with a 10-inch tablet, which also has the ability to dock into a netbook-sized keyboard. Interested? Read on…
The Padfone has been shown off before, but ASUS has been forced to head back to the drawing board several times, most notably because Google decided to release Android 4.0. The product is finally finished and ready to sell, and it’s a beast in more ways than one. We’re going to break it down for you, because we lost track listening to ASUS’ press conference, such is the extent of the Padfone’s features.
The Phone (The ‘Fone’)
The heart and soul of the whole thing is the smartphone, which can be docked into a 10-inch tablet, but more on that later. The phone runs on Android 4.0 – aka Ice Cream Sandwich – and features an impressive 4.3-inch Super AMOLED qHD screen, super-fast Dual-Core S4 processor from Qualcomm and an 8-Megapixel camera, and that’s just for starters.
The rear camera has an LED flash and an autofocus lens with an aperture of f/2.2. There’s also a front-facing camera which records in VGA quality for video calling. Internally there is 16GB of inbuilt storage, which can be expanded by a further 32GB using a Micro SD card.
Connectivity is strong with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and A-GPS, HDMI-out and HSPA+ mobile internet – the only things missing are NFC and 4G, but we can forgive ASUS for that.
Despite a host of tech crammed in, the phone is a slender 9.2mm thick, and looks very nice indeed with curved edges and a glossy black finish.
The Tablet (The ‘Pad’)
For those times when you feel that your phone’s 4.3-inch screen just isn’t big enough to watch that movie, play that game or edit that word document, ASUS has gifted you with the option to dock its new mobile into a 10-inch tablet and view things on a bigger screen.
The tablet itself resembles the company’s original Eee Pad Transformer if you ask us, with distinctive speaker grills either side of the screen. Unfortunately the tablet is classed as an optional extra, as is the dock that you’ll need to buy in order to transform the phone into said tablet. However, by doing so you’ll increase the phone’s battery life exponentially.
As if that wasn’t all, ASUS says the tablet itself can be docked into an optional netbook-sized keyboard, just like with its Transformer series of tablets. With this product, you’ll effectively be able to transform your smartphone into a fully-fledged netbook.
Just to top things off – to blow your mind, in fact – the tablet comes with a stylus, but not just any stylus. This one can draw on the screen, make annotations and such, and also doubles up as a wireless hands-free kit for taking calls from your docked phone. It doesn’t look like it would attach to your ear very well, unless you jammed it into your ear canal, but by god, it’s an impressive feat.
ASUS advised at MWC that the Padfone will launch in April, though it didn’t let us know the price or exactly which markets will be getting it. Stay tuned for the latest.
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