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This is Asus’s Fonepad. Not to be confused with the Padfone. It’s a 7-inch tablet priced at £179…which also makes calls.
The 7-inch tablet runs on Jelly Bean and has a 1280 by 800 pixel display, and is the same size and same resolution as Google’s Nexus 7 tablet. It also doesn’t have a back facing camera, because Asus understands that taking pictures with a tablet is not okay. But it does have a 1.2-megapixel lens on the front for video calling.
The tablet runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset, and has 64GB of storage. Apparently tablet phones are a thing now, so we might as well just accept it. Sigh.
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think you may have got the pricing slightly off?!
The FonePad will be available in Europe for £179 / €219.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/25/asus-fonepad-announced/
Oh odd; not sure how that happened. Thanks!
At a guess I’d say that they accidentally priced the Fonepad with the Padfone pricing; Padfone apparently being £875 would be around €1000.
This Fonepad / Padfone stuff is already pissing me off.
Next up: the Padfone and PadPhone.
I don’t think my brain can take that kind of pressure.
You forgot the PhonePad, not to mention the inevitable Chinese knockoffs the iFonepad & iPadfone.
Kill me now.
Hi Leslie,
I guess tablet phones habe been a thing since the first Galaxy Note. Just my opinion.
Comedic license, innit.
Have you checked that it hasn’t expired? Comic Licence Detector Vans are operating in your area.
Well kinda, yeah. But I don’t see that much of a difference between 5.5″ ‘phablet’ and a 7″ tablet phone’. Even the “terms” seem to mean the same thing.
They’ve been a thing for a couple of years – Samsung released the 7″ Galaxy Tab with full 3g capabilities, phone calls and texts in September 2010. HTC released one at the same time (the Flyer) and there have been two generations of upgrades…
I cant believe everyone on most tech sites keeps thinking this is something new?
I’ve got one of the originals and I love it.
Fits in a back jeans or suit jacket pocket, there’s no issue toting it around. Once I tried it there was no going back to a smaller screen for me.
Hi Ourobourus,
I guess the writers sometimes take their own time to realize something is not new anymore.
The end times are upon us. Repent that we may one day bring device size back down to normal and hold-able.
I thought this runs on Intel Atom not a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset? Please clarify. This tablet phone thing has is not new, it has been around since Galaxy tab 1 (3g version) and it will not go away soon. I’d get one myself if it has higher resolution and a better cpu to replace my original galaxy note and my nexus 7.
Does this have 4g or 3g and so the calling ability is just a side effect or does it just make calls and have no mobile data?
Someone else who does not know his fron from his rear ! To take pictures a camera needs to be front-facing …..if you look very carefully at a few cameras they all have front-facing lenses. It is the same with the main camera on a mobile phone. The camera used for video calls is indeed mounted on the front face of the phone, ie. front-mounted, but of course it is backward-facing just like the rear-view mirror in a car . Do we need to go over this again ?
I would love to be able to use my Nexus 7 for calls and texts. If you could change the caller ID to my mobile number and sync the texts, then it would be quite a useful second phone. Great for when you are out of batteries, phone is in another room, you can’t hear your phone (presume it would ring too) etc.
If you have a 3g Nexus 7, there is an ongoing effort at XDA developers to get the intentionally crippled phone capabilities up and running.
Otherwise there are some 7″ tablets with full phone capabilities (HTC Flyer, Samsung Galaxy tab 3g, Tab2 3g and 7 Plus 3g).
Not quite as powerful as the Nexus, but all have an SD card slot, a rear camera and aren’t crippled.