The Asus Padfone, first teased in May 2011, was formally unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Monday, February 26, and it didn't just live up to the hype, it far exceeded it.
At the heart of the device is a 4.3-inch smartphone powered by Snapdragon's new dual-core S4 chip and an Adreno 225 GPU, with a super AMOLED qHD display, running on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Phone features include an 8 MP main camera with backside illuminated sensor and f/2.2 autofocusing lens, LED flash, a front facing VGA camera, 16 to 64GB of internal storage (expandable via microSD), Bluetooth 4.0, HDMI, GPS, A-GPS, a gyroscope, 1,520mAh battery and a compass.
The main camera can record HD 1080p video.
It supports WCDMA (900, 2100 MHz), EDGE / GPRS / GSM (850, 1800 and 1900 MHz) and HSPA+.
The 128 x 65.4 x 9.2 mm Padfone weighs 129 g with battery.
While the smartphone specs are impressive, it's what the smartphone doesn't feature but can use that makes it a market leader. The phone slips into a dock with a 10.1 display, making it magically turn into a tablet!
Asus Padfone with display dock. Photo Credit: Asus
The transition from the 4.3-in display of the Padfone to the 10.1-in display of its dock is seamless. To boot, the dock has additional battery that extends battery life 5x.
But wait! It gets even more exciting. The Padfone with its display dock can be together plugged into a keyboard dock to help you get productive and gain even more battery juice – a total of 9x now! You are working with a full featured notebook, now!
Asus Padfone stylus that doubles as headset. Photo Credit: Asus
Finally, there is a stylus that doubles as a headset. You can use it to scribble, draw, write, and pick up calls with absolute ease. The PadFone Stylus Headset even comes with its own alert system, where the PadFone and PadFone Station vibrate and beep to let you know when the Stylus Headset has been left behind!
The Padfone will ship in April. Asus has yet to firm up the price of the smartphone and its accessories.
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