Do you have a massive head? When I say massive, I’m talking equine. If a Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 is too tiny for you, and the Huawei Ascend Mate won’t quite do it either, then the Asus Fonepad could be just the phablet you’re looking for.
Yes, it’s the biggest phone since the eighties, and it’s coming to the Carphone Warehouse for £179.99 SIM free. Ah… at that price I think maybe I should stop joking.
The Fonepad is basically a 7″ 3G tablet with built in voice call/SMS functionality, and if you take a look at the specs below you will see that even without the phone capability it’s a pretty decent tablet for the money.
- Processor: Intel Atom Z2420 1.2GHz
- Graphics: Imagination PowerVR SGX540
- Screen: 7-inch 1280×800 IPS touch screen
- RAM: 1GB
- Storage: 16GB, microSD slot, 5GB lifetime ASUS WebStorage
- Communications: telephony, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS
- Imaging: 1.2-megapixel front facing camera
- Power: 4,270mAh battery
- Construction: Grey or gold “metallic design”, 196.6 х 120.1 х 10.4mm, 340g
- Software: Android 4.1 Jelly Bean (4.2 upgrade “as quickly as possible”)
- Priced at £179.99 inc VAT
If you compare the Fonepad to the Nexus 7 tablets (also made by Asus) you’ll notice that it’s cunningly priced at £20 more than the 16GB wi-fi only version and a whopping £60 cheaper than the 32GB 3G + wi-fi variant. It also has a microSD card slot which is one of the major features sadly omitted from the Nexus. OK, so the battery’s a bit smaller, the Android version is one step behind and it’s got an Intel processor, but this awkwardly named underdog deserves serious consideration.
In fact, that processor does throw up some interesting possibilities; it’s based on x86 architecture and therefore, in theory, could run Windows. I’m no developer, and I really couldn’t say how much work it would be, but imagine a 7″ dual bootable Android Jelly Bean/Windows 8 handset! Not so funny now eh, Mr. Whelan?
The stock will be arriving at Carphone Warehouse on Friday 26th April, but if you want to reserve yourself one then get over to their web page this Friday (12th April), because that’s when pre-ordering starts. In the mean time, sit back and enjoy a short film about the Asus Fonepad:
http://youtu.be/TuMHScgnRUI
Source – Techradar
That is a blinding price. I’m waiting to see if this gets any traction:
http://www.asus.com/Tablets_Mobile/PadFone_Infinity
I carry my phone and tablet with me when I go to work, it would be great to have an all-in-one device where the phone part can be undocked so you don’t look too silly talking to it!
What I don’t understand is, if they can produce a tablet with those specs for that price, why can’t they produce a phone with those specs for that price? Doesn’t make sense does it!?
Just goes to show how the smartphone market is still over-inflated.
Oh, and in theory you could probably force Windows on it somehow (maybe not Win8), but you’d have to write some sort of BIOS/UEFI emulator/hack to get it to work in quite the same way. Plus the fact that drivers would definitely be an issue. I very much doubt it would be a pleasurable experience.