What happens when you merge a smartphone with a tablet? You get the ASUS Padfone.
Evan Blass of PocketNow just posted some leaked photos that reveal one of the most interesting hardware ideas I have seen come to Android in awhile. The Padfone is a combination of a normal Android smartphone and a tablet accessory (appears to be 10 inch) that includes a special dock which completely consumes the phone when closed.
The concept is similar to what we saw from the Motorola Atrix 4G and its lapdock accessory which were a major disappointment, so hopefully ASUS has a few tricks up their sleeve to improve the user experience.
No details were provided about the hardware specs, but I’m going to assume the Padfone will feature a multi-core CPU to power that big tablet display. ASUS recently went with the NVIDIA Tegra 2 in their Transformer tablet, but they also have a working relationship with Qualcomm so we could see a new dual-core Snapdragon inside as well.
It was also reported that ASUS is working on devices with the upcoming Tegra 3 processor, but we don’t expect quad-core CPUs in smartphones until Christmas.
Hit up the source link for a couple more pictures. What do you think of this latest design from ASUS? How much would you be willing to pay for a tablet accessory that you could power with your smartphone?
