Asus is bringing a new Fonepad to market. The company uses the name to describe a device which blurs the lines between a phone and tablet by giving you a tablet-sized display, but the ability to make phone calls.
The new Asus Fonepad 7 features a 7 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel display, an Intel Atom processor, and generally looks a lot like last year’s model — but it’s expected to have a faster processor and a better camera, among other things.
The Asus FonePad 7 showed up at some retail sites in Europe in August, with a price tag of around $300. Now Asus has posted a promo video on YouTube.
The new tablet features stereo front-facing speakers, a microSD card slot, a 1.2MP front camera, and a 5MP rear camera with an F2.4 lens. It’ll be available in black or white.
Other specs are expected to include 1GB of RAM, 8GB to 32GB of storage, WiFi, Bluetooth, and a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom Z2560 dual-core processor with PowerVR SGX 544MP2 graphics.
While those specs aren’t exactly top-of-the-line for a tablet or a smartphone, they should be good enough to run Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and handle most Android apps.
The Fonepad supports HSPA+ networks, 802.11n WiFi, and Bluetooth 3.0.
Overall, the Fonepad 7 seems to be aimed at budget-conscious shoppers who don’t want to buy a tablet and a smartphone, and who don’t mind either holding a huge phone up to their head or using a headset.
via Techblog.gr
Sigh… More lovely ASUS products we will never be able to actually buy in Asia.
It is time to have 1440*900 or 1376*768 resolution in 7 inch tablets.
FHD in middle-priced range is redundant, but there are should be enough screen resolution to handle RDP session with big brother.
And 2 GiB of RAM also are welcome.
Stereo front facing speakers is huge. Once you have had decent speakers on a tablet (BB PlayBook) you’ll ALWAYS need this style in future. Sound firing into your chest or away from you leads to muffled and muted frustration.
This would be a nice tablet if it would have at least 2GB of RAM. All tablets will need that as a baseline going into next year and anything that doesn’t have that will be bottom of the barrel.
Screen wise, especially at 7″, the resolution isn’t a big deal to me. It’s fine for all types of use including e-reading.
The phone capabilities of this device intrigue me. Had it had 2GB of RAM, I’d have probably been keen to buy one. As it stands now, not going to happen unless I won it.
PS. Using a headset or as a speakerphone is the way you use this tablet as a phone.
Lots of folks would love this design. Who makes many phone calls anymore but it is nice to be able to when needed. Now if T-Mobile added it’s wifi calling app it would be great.