![]() Having it tapered both length-wise and depth-wise makes the phone appear not only slimmer (the actual thickness along the length of the phone is more consistent than it looks), but also lets our palm wrap around the back cover's rounded sides in a more seamless manner. To achieve this feat, ASUS used a matte aluminum frame to provide a fairly rigid structure. ![]() In an era full of flagships with screen sizes above 4.3 inches, going back to grasping this smaller handset actually gave us quite a welcoming sensation, but obviously it wasn't just the size at play here. For a device featuring an aluminum frame and a slab of glass, ASUS has delivered a pleasant surprise with the PadFone's weight - after all, the designers do need to keep the overall package as light as possible, but more on that later.%Gallery-156534% Then we go towards the other end of the scale with the 121g LG Optimus L7, the 119.5g HTC One S (also with a 4.3-inch PenTile Super AMOLED screen and MSM8260A chip) and the 103g Panasonic Eluga - though the Eluga does have a much smaller, non-removable battery. For comparison, the similarly sized Galaxy S II (international) officially weighs just one gram more, whereas the Sony Xperia S and the Lenovo LePhone K2 take a big jump to 144g and 145g, respectively. In terms of dimensions and weight, the PadFone comes in at 128 x 65.4 x 9.2mm (5.0 x 2.6 x 0.4 inches) and 129g (4.6 ounces), making it one of the lighter smartphones in the 4.3-inch class. ![]() You can add even more via microSDXC - that could be an additional 64GB if you're lucky enough to track down one of those unicorn cards. The Taiwanese version also comes with a generous 32GB of internal eMMC flash storage plus another 32GB of free ASUS Webstorage for three years. You get a 4.3-inch, 960 x 540 Samsung Super AMOLED display (with Gorilla Glass plus a hard coat, low reflection film), a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 SoC (MSM8260A at 1.5GHz), 1GB LPDDR2 RAM, an 8-megapixel AF camera with LED flash, a VGA front-facing camera and a removable 3.7V 1,520mAh battery. Let's focus on the phone first: in Taiwan, you can buy this HSPA+ (WCDMA 900/2100) handset on its own - for NT$17,990 (about US$610, or US$580 before tax) without contract. If you've been following this product closely, you should know by now that the full PadFone package - assembled in Pegatron's Shanghai plant - comes in three main parts: the phone, the PadFone Station pad and the PadFone Station keyboard dock. Hardware ASUS has delivered a pleasant surprise with the PadFone's weight. Most importantly, will the company set a new trend with this two- or three-in-one form factor - in the same way it did with netbooks - thus taking the Android ecosystem to the next level? Let's see.%Gallery-155848% %Gallery-155852% What we want to know is whether ASUS' courageous and unique project has all the right ingredients to squeeze itself into a market now dominated by the likes of Apple, Samsung and HTC. This time, the new April target was missed by only three weeks, and shortly afterwards we got hold of our retail unit from Taiwan, which is still the only place where you can get hold of the product.īut enough with the story. Then CES and MWC went by, with the latter hosting the official launch event to unveil the PadFone's final design and availability date. Meanwhile, a bunch of Android Eee Pads started entering the market to get a slice of that hot tablet pie.Įventually, the PadFone shocked the industry at last year's Computex (remember our brilliant mockup based on the teaser pics?), but ASUS went on to miss its Christmas launch target, allowing it extra time to rejig the phone's software and design. The next thing we knew, the outfit was openly considering Windows Phone, but obviously nothing came to fruition despite its E600 engineering units floating about in the wild. ASUS' last smartphone was the Android 2.1-powered A10 from two years ago, then five months later the company ended its smartphone partnership with Garmin (though they're still friends).
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