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The Asus Padfone took 12 months to arrive on the market after it was first announced. Now, for multi-tasking device lovers everywhere, there’s a new version of the smartphone powered tablet — and it seems to want to show off its insides.
The first iteration of the Padfone had a little door to hide the phone that powers the tablet, whereas the Padfone 2 proudly shows off the phone, which slots into a dock on the back of the device. There it stands, protruding from the back of the rather thin tablet.
The phone itself is a bit of a snorer, in the bigger-is-better vein of Android phone design: 4.7-inch 720p IPS display, 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4, 2GB of RAM, 13MP camera… but only Android 4.0.4. Connectivity-wise, you’re looking at LTE, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, and GPS.
The tablet packs a 1280 x 800, 10.1-inch display, with a mere 5000mAh battery to complement the phone’s 2140mAh cell. In fact, the tablet unit itself has seen a battery downgrade, which is a bit weird.
All told, it’s not clear how much better than the original Padfone this second iteration will be. But then, targeted at a pretty niche market in the first place, it’s not clear how useful the format itself is anyway. Do any of you use a Padfone? [Asus via The Verge]
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It looks good but “Padfone”? Nope.
So a phone with those specs is a “a bit of a snorer”, but people are still having to wipe the jiz stains off the iPhone 5 review? Horses for courses I suppose.
i wondered about his reasoning too, those specs and features seem pretty healthy to me
Depends on what the software can do with those specs.
am guessing it would just duplicate the OS on the phone wouldn’t it?, with maybe just a different layout when docked, or have i missed something?
I thought it was meant to be sarcastic?
Hope so. The only thing even approaching the description is the version of Android its running
I expect Apple’s wrath to fall upon the Padphone Tablet as the back of it bears a likeness to one of their more popular products….
I mean, look at those corners and that speaker. PATENT!
The only device with comparable specs is the Note II – it’s faster and carries more RAM than the SGSIII, One-X, Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HD, Xperia T; and a better camera than all but the Xperia T.
How is this a ‘snorer’?!?!
Because it’s not an ‘iPadfone 6′.
It’s not?!? I don’t want it then!!
I don’t even know why ‘iGizmodo in association with Nokia Lumia’ would even post such a dull product.
._.
Depending on price I think this is a good idea as you’re not paying ‘twice’ for similar electronic internals. IMHO
800 Euros cheapest….eekk
I do think its a really good idea, however it could do with a graphics card of some sort in the tablet to give it a boost.
This is probably how all things will be in 10 years with your phone being your tablet and pc at home displaying through DLNA or something like that.
Why does it need a GFX card?! The tablet display is only 80px bigger (in one dimension) than the phone’s.
erm so it can support higher resolutions perhaps?
Then the tablet itself would need to be higher-res…
All the article stipulates is the resolution on the tablet… I would presume that the resolution is limited through the phone, not the screen.
My understanding of the padfone is that it just plugs into the tablet, and the tablet works as a monitor, nothing more.
If you have a PC with onboard graphics and plug it into a 42″ tv it wont always support 1080p… You would need a standalone GFX card also, the same should apply with this.
It also states that it’s a 4.7″ 720p IPS display on the phone, so given the rest of the phone specs, I doubt it would need any additional power – the SGSIII will happily drive an external 1080 line display and that too has a 1280×720 screen.
The limit of the tablet is likely the fact that they don’t want to spend more money on the tablet display than they have to, which personally I don’t like – you can’t give me a 4.7″ phone with practically the same resolution as the 10.1″ tablet, I want more pixels – 1920×1200 would do nicely!
Would be great if you could use the dock to recharge the phone.