Eee Pad Transformer Prime tablet from Asus will be upgradeable to Ice Cream Sandwich by year’s end

When Asus chairman Jonney Shih sat opposite the Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg at the AsiaD conference saying his company was taking Android seriously, he wasn’t kidding. The Eee Pad Transformer Prime, the successor to his company’s Eee Pad Transformer tablet, will run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

However, the device will have Android 3.2 pre-installed when it ships shortly and will be upgradeable to Ice Cream Sandwich via a software update, which will be arriving by the year’s end, DigiTimes reports:

The first batch of Transformer Prime tablets will run on Android 3.2 before migrating to Android 4.0 by the end of 2011, said Shih, who unveiled the new tablet at the All Things Digital (AsiaD) technology forum being held in Hong Kong from October 19-21.

Like its predecessor, the 10-inch Eee Pad Transformer Prime functions as a tablet which can be docked to a keyboard attachment that turns it into a full-fledged notebook replacement. It is powered by Nvidia’s latest quad-core chip dubbed Kal-El and the company recently released a nice-looking teaser announcing its imminent arrival. They used advanced material processing so the device features high-quality chassis crafted from aluminum. The keyboard dock is understood to include a touch panel and expansion slots.