At Computex, Asus announced a phone with half a tablet and a tablet with half a phone. The Padphone that leaked earlier today is official, although its specs haven’t been finalized yet and then there’s the MeMO tablet with a glasses-free 3D screen and phone-like Bluetooth gadget.
Leaked photos of the Asus Padphone barely entered the rumor mill and it’s already official (this happens a week after the initial teaser). Asus showed only a mockup at Computex as the design for the gadget hasn’t been finalized yet.
Here’s the deal (if the name hasn’t given it away yet) – it’s an Android phone with 4.3” screen that inserts into a 10.1” tablet. Not much is clear about the Padphone, aside from Asus hinting it will run Ice Cream Sandwich, which makes sense since that’s the Android version that is supposed to unify the phone and tablet Android branches.
Anyway, the tablet is just a dock – it displays the phone’s UI on its bigger screen and provides a big battery, speakers and some extra ports. The phone has a microHDMI and microUSB ports that hook up to the tablet to output the screen image and charge the phone and there’s a 5MP camera on the back (with a hole at the back of the tablet dock so that you can still take photos).
Here are a couple of promo videos that show the Asus Padphone (computer generated) action (remember it’s still at the mockup stage).
Hey wait, was that Internet Explorer 8 on the tablet dock’s screen on this second video (1:36)? What?
We’ve already seen a netbook dock for an Android phone (Motorola’s Atrix and dock) and Asus’ own Transformer tablet sort of turns into a netbook with its keyboard dock. Now the Asus Padphone is another variation on the theme. Asus say it should be out for Christmas and judging by the Transformer’s price tag, there’s a chance it will have a decent price too.
Next up is the Asus Eee Pad MeMO 3D. It’s a 7” Android tablet with a glasses-free 3D IPS display with 1280 x 800 pixels resolution. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? It reportedly runs Android Honeycomb on a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm CPU. Unlike the Padphone, Asus showed an actual working prototype.
Here’s the deal though – there’s a Bluetooth remote that can control the MeMO 3D and you can actually take calls on it like a phone. It’s got a transparent screen too, to increase the “cool” factor. Of course, if you want to use the remote (called “MeMIC”) as a phone, the MeMO 3D will have to be in Bluetooth range (10m at best).
Engadget shot a hands-on video with the Eee Pad MeMO 3D, and here it is
http://www.viddler.com/simple/4d6689c5/
