The ASUS PadFone series is a rather interesting product which offers seamless convergence between phone and tablet. All 4 PadFone models produced so far comes with a full size 10-inch dockable tablet.
Now with the increased popularity of compact tablets, ASUS is releasing a new model that’s expected to be called the PadFone mini 4.3. Being a “mini” version, the PadFone mini 4.3 comes with a smaller smart phone with a 4.3″ display and a smaller station tablet that carries a 7″ screen. The launch is happening next week on 11th December but now we get an early glimpse of the device thanks to @evleaks.
Spec-wise, it is rather entry level with the display rumoured to be doing qHD resolution of 960×540 and powering the hybrid duo is a quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor. As comparison, its newly updated PadFone Infinity runs on a faster 2.2GHz Quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor with 2GB of RAM and comes with Full HD for both smart phone and tablet. The pre-updated PadFone Infinity running on Snapdragon 600 processor was launched in Malaysia about 3 months ago with a rather hefty RM2,699 price tag. You can check out our hands-on of the PadFone Infinity here.
With the previous PadFone models, the benefit of having a smart phone and tablet convergence makes more sense as it doubles up your display experience from a 5″ to a larger 10″ display. With this new one, the benefit of switching between a 4.3″ to a 7″ display doesn’t seem to be that great, especially when there’s plenty 6-7″ phablets that offer similar experience.
Check out another image of the PadFone mini 4.3 after the break.
