AT&T today has released a trio of new tablets. The carrier is now offering the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 10.1, Galaxy Note Pro 12.2, and ASUS PadFone X. The trio of devices are all available for purchase today with 4G LTE capabilities. The company also announced that its GoPhone prepaid plans are now compatible with a handful of tablets.
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By all accounts the Consumer Electronics Show kicking off in the next 10 days is looking to be fairly tame. While its true there could be dozens of surprises in store, the hype thus far has been pretty timid and I don’t see many of my colleagues expecting a wild ride as has been the case in years past. That’s not to say CES won’t be filled with exciting announcements of new products by hundreds of companies all converging on Las Vegas for one week in early January.
The ASUS PadFone may be a relatively unknown name in the US outside of the tech-savvy circles but the company hopes to change that next year. With big ambitions for its phone-to-tablet convertible device, the company looks set to finally enter the ever-important US market next year.
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Varied hands-on looks at the Asus PadFone while at Mobile World Congress 2012 are exploding across the Web, but the consensus on the three-in-one combination seems generally positive.
The 4.3-inch device is in its last form and features a texture on the back cover, 3.5mm headphone jack on top, ports and connectors on the left side, and an aesthetic similar to the Transformer Pad. The Verge declared the screen as “bright and fairly snappy.”
According to a press release, the device transforms into a 10.1-inch tablet with five times the battery capacity when placed inside the PadFone Station. The PadFone Station also offers an optional keyboard dock that looks like other Asus docks. It essentially converts the PadFone into an “ultraportable computing device.”
The PadFone’s Stylus Headset employs a pliable rubber ball unlike more firm, plastic-tipped stylus competitors. Many reports indicate the bluetooth stylus is responsive, but it apparently requires more pressure than comparable products. Moreover, Asus’ Jonney Shih announced at MWC 2012 that the stylus doubles as a headset for “picking up calls easily.”
The Asus PadFone’s full spec sheet, hands-on images and video are available below.
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More details are trickling in regarding the Padfone, a phone-turned-tablet device that Asus officially announced this morning at Computex. Engadget went hands-on with a device mockup Asus has been showing off at the Computex show. More importantly, they squeezed out a target release date and other tidbits from their manager Benson Lin.
ASUS’ Benson Lin was careful not to openly admit the company intends to ship with Ice Cream Sandwich, but he did point out that you can’t launch a smartphone with Honeycomb as the OS. We were encouraged to draw our own conclusions.
Go past the fold for a couple more tidbits…
Asus is shooting for a Christmas release, the publication reported, when a second-generation Transformer and Slider are also due. The Padfone smartphone can be housed inside a tablet shell to double as a portable computer akin to the Eee Transformer Pad. The phone and the tablet communicate via microHDMI and USB, with the latter also supplying power to the phone from the tablet shell batteries.
