Padfone 2

If you are undecided between smartphones and tablets, buy this. It is a ‘two-in-one’

This is the second version of Padfone, and it is faster and better looking than the first one. For now it is available only in Taiwan, and should have an India release towards December this year.

The Padfone extends your mobile phone. You can dock it to a screen, and instantly transform it into a tab­let. And this tablet can take your calls just like a phone. If you carry a tablet only because of its larger screen, this Pad will work for you. Plus, it hous­es a powerful battery that extends the phone’s talk time to 36 hours, when it is docked.

The phone part of Padfone 2 has a 13 megapixel camera. It can take 720 p videos at 60 frames per sec­ond, so you can capture the action in slow motion too. Its 4.7 inch (12 cm) screen has a Super IPS+ panel with a pixel density of 312 ppi—in other words, it is bright and good looking. And it weighs only 135 gm.

The phone runs on Android 4.0 and should be upgradable to 4.1. The hardware includes a quad core Snapdragon S4 processor running at 1.5 GHz, 2GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage—but no microSD card slot. You can also buy models with 16 GB and 64 GB storage.

The dock or ‘Pad’ of the Padfone is a 10.1 inch (25 cm) IPS panel with WXGA resolution. Its pixel density is 149 ppi. Compared to the phone, it is a bit of a letdown. The pad and phone put together weigh just 649 gm, which is less than an iPad.

Asus will let you buy the phone without the dock screen. But it is un­clear if you can buy the big screen separately.

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Gagandeep Singh Sapra