Yesterday was a busy day for ASUS at the Consumer Electronics Show. Already well-regarded for the Transformer line of Android tablets, the Taiwanese computer giant — fifth in sales worldwide — showed off impressive devices.
First on our radar is the PadPhone X. If the name seems unfamiliar, that may have to do with the fact that the device has never been sold in the United States before. The concept is a fairly basic 5″ phone and tablet station. The X’s station is a 9″ overlay. While we know that the PadPhone X will be on AT&T and run Android 4.4, we don’t know a release date or specs. One factor that may influence things is that the PadPhone X will use LTE-A, a new specification that AT&T is rolling out. Expect not to see the X before at least a decent portion of AT&T’s network is upgraded.
Until then, enjoy this lovely press photo.
There’s a lot more information floating around for the X’s younger sibling, the PadPhone Mini. Priced at $249, the Mini is a 4″ phone and docs with a 7″ tablet. It’s mini in more than size though. The screen resolutions (800 x 480 for the phone and 1,280 x 800 for the tablet) are almost sad in the day and age of HD tablets. On the plus side, there’s a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom Z2560 chip. Also, the PadPhone Mini will run Android 4.3, an older version, with Asus’s new ZenUI. We’re holding off on any comment about the unseen skin except to note that skinned Android devices tend to get Android updates slower than unskinned ones. Seems a shame to be stuck at 4.3 (a.k.a. Jelly Bean) when everyone else is announcing KitKat devices (4.4).
Resisting the urge to make a pink jelly bean joke is hard.
If you like your phones without tablets, the Zenfone line might be for you. That is, if you live outside the United States. ASUS is aiming the release of these elsewhere, and that’s a shame. We’re talking about a $100 Zenfone 4, $150 Zenfone 5, and $200 Zenfone 6; all of these phones come with dual-core Intel Atom chips and 720p on the 5″ and 6″ models. Plus, they’re all off contract. Please reconsider sending these our way, ASUS.
“Now available in Nokia yellow”.
We’ve saved the most interesting device for last: The Transformer Book Duet. While ASUS’s other devices are strictly Android affairs, the Duet comes with a surprise inside: Windows. The $599 tablet/notebook already has our attention for being affordable. Throw in a 13″ screen, Core i7 chip, and 128 GB SSD on the tablet part with another 1 TB on the dock, and you can officially call us techcited. Thicker and heavier than most tablets, that’s the trade-off for the specs above. Think of it less as a tablet and more as a notebook with a tablet option. ASUS claims that switching between operating systems will take under five seconds. Impressive, even if the Android version is 4.1 (Windows, thankfully, is the current 8.1 revision).
“Initiate saucer separation, Mr. Data.”
This isn’t the first Android/Windows hybrid in general or even from Asus in specific (that’d be the Transformer Book Trio, announced back in June). However, this is a somewhat more appealing device in terms of specs, price, and aesthetics.
We live in a sad world, when your skin affects your OS build.