Asus 4.7-inch Padfone 2 demoed in video with new slimmer tablet dock

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  • October 14, 2012 at 3:25 pm

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ASUS Padfone 2 smartphone and tablet dock leak

ASUS is a pretty innovative hardware company. It pretty much rules in the motherboard space and fed the netbook craze by pumping out new models practically every week. So, when we first saw the original Padfone we were impressed but not surprised. The Padfone was the ultimate all in one device, a 4.3-inch smartphone that could slide into a tablet dock to take on slate form which could then dock with a keyboard to become a notebook.

Unfortunately, the Padfone hardly found its way to the international market after being unveiled early this year, but fortunately, you may (hopefully) soon be able to pick up its successor. ASUS has a launch event scheduled in Milan on October 16th, which you can watch live, for the unveiling of the Padfone 2.

The second iteration of the Padfone will have a larger 4.7-inch 720p display, run on a quad-core SoC with LTE connectivity and sport a 13-megapixel rear camera. More importantly, the Padfone 2 tablet dock is now much slimmer and lighter than its predecessor, which admittedly was quite chunky — we’re sure to the dismay of owners of the original Padfone smartphone/dock who’ll find their devices incompatible with the newer version, but that’s life in the fast-moving tech world.
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Google Nexus 7 Android 4.1 Jelly Bean tablet confirmed by ASUS representative for June

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  • June 11, 2012 at 11:50 am

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Asus Eee Pad ME370T 7-inch tablet

We’ve been hearing about a Google Nexus tablet since the beginning of the year, with ASUS apparently being the manufacturer of the economical 7-inch slab that could be appropriately named, Nexus 7.

Well we now apparently have confirmation of the partnership between ASUS and Google from the mouth of a representative of the former at Computex in Taipei. The Nexus 7 tablet is expected to be ready for shipment by the end of June, happily coinciding with Google I/O running June 27-29 in San Fransisco, and the perfect platform to announce the next version of Android.

This will be the first tablet to carry the Nexus name, following the Nexus One, Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus smartphones, and you can be sure it will be carrying a stock version of Android. In fact it’s been rumored to become the carrier of the next big version of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean (you can read more here about Android’s naming convention).
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The ultimate unboxing video: ASUS PadFone 3-in-1

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  • May 12, 2012 at 3:22 am

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ASUS Padfone unboxing

It’s exciting enough to take one new device out of the loneliness of its factory box and into the world, but how about three? And then how about if those three devices can morph into each other, giving you a smartphone, a tablet and a laptop.

This is the ASUS PadFone, a 3-in-1 device that go from a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED qHD 960×540 smartphone to a 10.1-inch 1280×800 tablet and then dock with a keyboard to take laptop form. The PadFone is a dual-core Snapdragon S4 device running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich that was unveiled early this year at Mobile World Congress. It also has an 8-megapixel camera, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and a variety of other connectivity options, with nothing to be jealous of other high-end smartphones.
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Asus and NVIDIA announce 7-inch Tegra 3 quad-core tablet with Ice Cream Sandwich for $249

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  • January 10, 2012 at 3:35 am

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Asus 7-inch NVIDIA Tegra 3 tablet ME370T

There are a lot of new tablets at CES this year. The biggest piece of news however has just come in today. NVIDIA has announced that a 7-inch version of the Asus Transformer Prime, which will also run on the Tegra 3 quad-core SoC and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, is coming soon. The Asus ME370T tablet will sell for $249 at launch.

This completely blows the under-powered and barebones $199 Kinde Fire and $249 Nook Tablet out the water. Besides the super fast Tegra 3 chip, the 7-inch Asus tablet will have a 1280 x 800 screen resolution and an 8-megapixel camera.
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ASUS Transformer Prime to receive update to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich on 12 January

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  • January 3, 2012 at 2:00 pm

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ASUS Transformer Prime running Android Ice Cream Sandwich

ASUS has taken to its official Facebook page to announce that its Nvidia Tegra 3 tablet will soon be updated to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). The update will start rolling out on the 12th of January to the 10.1-inch quad-core ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime, making it the first Android tablet to officially receive Android ICS. We are sure this will put a smile on all the lucky Transformer Prime owners out there.

Nevertheless, there has been a backlash from the developer community, as Transformer Prime owners discovered that the tablet’s bootloader is locked. ASUS explains that having a locked bootloader is a Google DRM (Digital Rights Management) requirement in order to allow users to rent videos. ASUS intends to provide an unlock utility. Use of the tool will void your warranty and make Google Video unavailable.
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Android Ice Cream Sandwich demoed on ASUS Transformer Prime Tegra 3 tablet (video)

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  • November 22, 2011 at 4:26 pm

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ASUS Transformer Prime running Android Ice Cream Sandwich

If you’ve been wondering how Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) looks like on a tablet, then wonder no more. Once Google made the source code of ICS available, Nvidia and ASUS rushed to the challenge and got the new operating system working on the ASUS Transformer Prime tablet. As a reminder the Transformer Prime is the first device to run on Nvidia’s brand new quad-core Tegra 3 chip. We’ve covered the Tegra 3 here, and it’s an impressive piece of silicon, which promises not only awesome processing and graphics power, but also longer battery life through aggressive throttling and a frugal 500MHz companion fifth-core.

We would easily guess that pairing such a chip with the latest and greatest version of Android would result in some smooth performance and now we’ve got the evidence to prove it. Nvidia has published a video of Android Ice Cream Sandwich running super smoothly on the Transformer Prime. If you would enjoy watching cool transitions, smooth 1080p playback and a demo of a quad-core optimized game called Riptide GP, head on after the break.
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