The Asus Padfone line of products are smartphones that become tablets (and sometimes laptops) when you slide the phone into docking stations. Now you can finally buy one from a major US wireless carrier.
AT&T is taking pre-orders for the Asus Padfone X for $200 with a 2-year service contract or $596 with no contract.
The phone should begin shipping to customers before the end of the month.
The Padfone X comes in two pieces. There’s a 5 inch Android smartphone with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, a 1080p display, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, a 13MP camera, a microSD card slot, and a 2300mAh battery. It supports 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth as well as 4G LTE.
When you want to use a larger screen and a bigger battery you can slide the phone into the included 9 inch tablet station which has a 1920 x 1200 pixel IPS display and a 4990mAH battery which extends your run time and recharges your phone while docked.
The Asus Padfone X isn’t the only new device available from AT&T. The company has also started taking orders for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 10.1 and Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 tablets.
Meanwhile the carrier is offering a $50 Google Play Store credit for customers who buy an activate a new Android phone or tablet with a 2-year contract. That contract will cost you a lot of money over the next few years, so $50 is just a drop in the bucket. But if you were planning on getting a new phone and contract anyway, this is a nice perk.
At this point, I’d like to run a desktop OS when docked. For example, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. If it’s running on an Intel chip then maybe Windows 8 (not RT). Of course, if it’s using a smartphone Intel SoC vs a tablet one then there’ll be some issues getting it to work with Windows 8.
I just wish this had arrived back when I was interested in it. 🙁