Asus started showing off its first 7 inch smartphone with an Intel Moorefield processor in June. Now the company has launched the Asus Fonepad 7 FE7530CXG in China, where it will be available for purchase starting September 1st.
It’s not clear if this particular model will be available outside of China anytime soon — but it’s also not clear if there’s a huge demand for smartphones with tablet-sized screens outside of Asia… unless you count the growing number of 5.5 inch and 6 inch phones as nearly tablet-sized.
Asus has been offering Fonepad models for over a year. The idea is that instead of buying a smartphone and a tablet, you can just use a relatively inexpensive 7 inch tablet as your smartphone. If it’s too big to hold to your ear you can always use a wired or Bluetooth headset.
The new model features a 1.33 GHz Intel Atom Z3530 quad-core 64-bit processor, which is one of the first Intel “Moorefield” chips available. It’s also the least powerful of Intel’s new quad-core smartphone chips, but it should still run circles around last year’s Clover Trail+ chips.
Asus has also shown off models with more powerful chips such as the 1.83 GHz Atom Z3560 processor. It’s not clear if or when those versions of the Fonepad 7 will launch.
The tablet has a 7 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel IPS display, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, Android 4.4 KitKat software, a 5MP rear camera, 2MP front-facing camera, and up to 11.5Â hours of battery life from a 15Whr battery.
It supports dual SIM cards and works with GSM and HSPA+ networks. The Fonepad 7 FE7530CXG also features 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and Miracast wireless display support.
via Notebook Italia and Padhz
I’d buy a competitively priced 7 inch phone over a regular sized phone. I don’t make that many calls though.
However what’s most important to me in a, “phone,” is the camera. It’s often said, the best camera is the one you have with you.
I don’t like holding my nexus 4 to my head, hands free is too much better.
If they are going to make these huge phones they need to make them with pop-out bluetooth ear pieces. The ear piece should charge when docked and connect the incoming call when removed from its docking slot.
I returned my dual-core merrifield Dell tablet (venue 8 2014). The battery life was much worse than my nexus 7 2013, and chrome updates would have GPU glitches. WiFi performance was horrible too. Intel could make a good tablet soc to save its life. Apple and Qualcomm are years ahead of that PC company.
Note that Moorefield sports a PowerVR G6430.
The Apple A7 SoC is also thought to have a G6430.