Thursday
May032012
Asus Padfone delayed, but does it matter?
Thursday, May 3, 2012 at 2:20AM Phone Arena is reporting that the Asus Padfone has been delayed (again) due to a shortage of Snapdragon S4 chips. The bigger question, however, is if a concept like this will be successful in the long run. I have to say that I think the ship has already sailed on the idea of a phone that fits in a tablet and that it may prove to be little more than a novelty. It is difficult to leverage the potential power of a tablet when the phone is the brain and it makes little sense in terms of power verses size.
Reader Comments (4)
I think it would still have merit if the tablet 'wrapper' had a reasonable incremental cost.
There's certainly an advantage to having a larger screen on demand, but still pocket sized for mobile use, without being burdened with synchronising when you want to switch to an enlarged platform.
Agree with Shaun to some extent. The Padphone is like the Motorola Atrix, except the lapdock was too expensive. The overall cost of the phone, tablet host and keyboard has to be less tan £800 to make sense.
This is the future, almost. The phone and the tablet need to be connected wirelessly, with the tablet containing just enough CPU horsepower to be a very low latency Splashtop THD client. THen you get all of the advantages plus the tablet can be thinner and lighter.
Also this thing can connect to the Transformer Prime keyboard, which means for many people this is all they need. Add in the abillity to wirelessly stream to a TV and Microsoft's 'many screens' ideal is a reality.
Of course rather than a separate tablet we really need a fold-out screen, but that may take a little longer...
Yes, it does matter because I want one.
A phone docking into tablet is unique.
Then docking onto a keyboard is quite special.
The pen accessory's function is not described in detail. Is it an active stylus like the Galaxy Note's or simply a fancy Capacitive stylus with integrated bluetooth headset?