News - ASUS will NOT release $250 7in Tegra 3 tablet in the UK

[HEXUS]

Thinks we would appreciate a Padfone instead.

Read more.

[Arthran]

Yes, we dont want cheap, high performance equipment, we would rather pay through the nose....

sigh!

[nichomach]

Idiots. Certifiable, irremediable IDIOTS.

[Biscuit]

Is all i can say

[crossy]

In the UK we don't see a demand for the 7in tablet at the moment and we will be focusing on releasing a Padfone, which is a smartphone and tablet hybrid. This will be formally announced at Mobile World Congress next month

Personally, the following song lyric pretty sums up my feelings:
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey stoopid
What ya tryin' to do
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey stoopid
They win you lose
(Chorus from "Hey Stoopid" by Alice Cooper if anyone's wondering)
I would have thought that any half sane person looking at the interest in the HP TouchPad "fire sale" over here would draw the conclusion that UK buyers are more than ready for a decently priced tablet device. Obviously Asus-UK's folks don't meet that "half sane" level.

The PadFone is not the same as having the MeMO tablet - if for no other reason than the cost and that the PadFone's screen is supposed to be 10.1". And while I'm heaping scorn on Asus, why the heck couldn't they have put a TF101/102 dock connector on the bottom and make it a triple-play device (phone, tablet and netbook)?

for many people, their phone is part of their identity and we can't see them walking around with a device that's likely half-assed because its other half is a tablet dock back at home or hidden away in a suitcase

I'm going to strongly disagree - PadFone sans tablet dock is not "half-assed", I'd take the view that like the Atrix, the dock is merely an add-on. From what I've read you can easily operate the 'Fone part without ever needing to unpack the Pad bit. Okay, it'd be a dumb thing to do, (you should have bought another phone), but there you go.

There's also been the suggestion made that the PadFone will be a "premium" product - so we're looking at £700-800+ SIM Free. If that's the case then I've just lost all interest in it, and I'm guessing that there'll be a lot of other prospective buyers who think similarly.

[Biscuit]

I was initially interested in the PadPhone concept but soon turned away from it after using a proper tablet.

The memo would sell like hotcakes, the padphone will flop... COMPLETELY

[crossy]

I was initially interested in the PadPhone concept but soon turned away from it after using a proper tablet.

That was the beauty of the idea of an ICS-equipped PadFone - in "Fone" mode then you had a pretty bog standard phone; but dock into into the "Pad" and after a short delay what you had was an ICS tablet, with similar capabilities to a keyboard-dock-less TF101 Transformer, i.e. a "proper" tablet. If your apps were written properly then they would be able to resize etc to fit the larger screen automatically. PadFone used like this would have been a brilliant demonstration why the tablet/phone convergence in ICS was a great idea.

The memo would sell like hotcakes, the padphone will flop... COMPLETELY

At £200 I'm going agree, the MeMO would probably have sold pretty well. To repeat an earlier statement, I think at a high price point then PadFone will flop. On the other hand, if they manage to do PadFone at £400 (with the Pad part) then I'll disagree and suggest that it'll do very well.

After all, PadFone is another step on this "device convergence" that the press bleat on about. Phone=phone+web+digicam+satnav, but PadFone adds "+tablet" to that. Still wished they'd added the keyboard dock connector so us Transformer owners could add their existing docks.

[Animus404]

I'd rather not have a PadPhone. I think the Tablet is going to the larger market because it's a safe bet, it will do very well. The UK, being a smaller market doesn't matter as much so we are going be experimented on.

[Spud1]

Lucky for us that we already have a very affordable, very powerful and high end 7" tablet that starts at £169 for the 16gb version - the Playbook.

Come Feburary 12th that will start selling out all over the place if that price remains the same - as the last few criticisms that reasonable people can throw at it will be gone (i.e it will get it's native email/cal/contact clients, the android player etc etc). Then you are left with the iOS and Android fanboys who of course will have a go at it..but for most people it will remain awesome value.

I agree that Asus have missed a trick here - if we exclude the playbook for a moment since it clearly still has limitations until Feb 12th - look at the HTC flyer. 7" android tablet with half decent specs, and when that was reduced to £180 it sold out in days nationwide. It's obvious to me that there is a huge demand for this form factor (and when you have used a 7" tablet, you can see why - it's the perfect size for most uses)..so even though I wouldn't have bought this Asus one, it does seem like a crazy decision.

[cheesemp]

Are they using the same market research group that persuaded Sony to develop the Xperia S with a fixed battery and storage (no uSD)?

[keithwalton]

Well done asus well done indeed

It is almost as if they don't want to sell their products in the uk.
First they decided only the one sku for the transformer prime, the probably least in demand sku at that and now this.

As previously mentioned the hp touchpad sold like mad when it was reduced, same with the bb playbook, so much so that it's gone back upto £249 when places started getting stock back.

It's fairly clear to me that if a tab is below £200 it will sell out of stock in days even if it has been abandoned by its maker or it runs a 3rd place os it still sells.

Also agree with the xperia s comment, sony have dropped the ball there was really tempted with it until i researched eMMC availability. 1Gig of storage is not enough in a smart phone that shoots 1080p video!

[Biscuit]

That was the beauty of the idea of an ICS-equipped PadFone - in "Fone" mode then you had a pretty bog standard phone; but dock into into the "Pad" and after a short delay what you had was an ICS tablet, with similar capabilities to a keyboard-dock-less TF101 Transformer, i.e. a "proper" tablet. If your apps were written properly then they would be able to resize etc to fit the larger screen automatically. PadFone used like this would have been a brilliant demonstration why the tablet/phone convergence in ICS was a great idea.

At £200 I'm going agree, the MeMO would probably have sold pretty well. To repeat an earlier statement, I think at a high price point then PadFone will flop. On the other hand, if they manage to do PadFone at £400 (with the Pad part) then I'll disagree and suggest that it'll do very well.

After all, PadFone is another step on this "device convergence" that the press bleat on about. Phone=phone+web+digicam+satnav, but PadFone adds "+tablet" to that. Still wished they'd added the keyboard dock connector so us Transformer owners could add their existing docks.

One massive dealbreaker to the pad phone... what happens if someone phones you? Not too much of an issue if your sat infront of the TV but what if your on the tube?
What about the extra thickness? A phone + a docking area means added thickness
what happens if one of the two breaks? Buy another bit you say, well looking at how quickly things are becoming EOL nowerdays i dont fancy that.

Too many flaws to be a good concept.

[crossy]

One massive dealbreaker to the pad phone... what happens if someone phones you? Not too much of an issue if your sat infront of the TV but what if your on the tube?
What about the extra thickness? A phone + a docking area means added thickness
what happens if one of the two breaks? Buy another bit you say, well looking at how quickly things are becoming EOL nowerdays i dont fancy that.

That "what happens if someone phones you in tablet mode?" question has been one oft-asked. Most seem to suggest that either docking the phone makes it divert calls to answerphone (but I can't believe that Asus would be THAT stupid!) or that the PF comes with a cheap bluetooth headset and automatically switches to that (or your own one) when docked.

The dock connection is on the right-hand side and is only a couple of mm (similar in size to the connectors on Galaxy Tab and Transformer). So yes, the tablet ends up looking like Quasimodo, but the phone's fine.

Your point about what to do with a (now useless) tablet dock if the phone is lost/stolen/broken is a good one though. eBay's going to do well out of it perhaps?

Also agree with the xperia s comment, sony have dropped the ball there was really tempted with it until i researched eMMC availability. 1Gig of storage is not enough in a smart phone that shoots 1080p video!

Xperia S has 32GB of eMMC - I think you've confused the RAM allocation with the fixed storage amount (see http://blogs.sonyericsson.com/produc...-new-xperia-s/ but avoid that cringeworthy video). I'm going to agree though that having the option of more storage, either via uSD or a 64GB SKU would have been highly desirable. Maybe Sony are going to push some kind of cloud storage? 32GB of space I can live with, non-removable battery on the other hand is a no-no.

[keithwalton]

...
Xperia S has 32GB of eMMC - I think you've confused the RAM allocation with the fixed storage amount (see http://blogs.sonyericsson.com/produc...-new-xperia-s/ but avoid that cringeworthy video). I'm going to agree though that having the option of more storage, either via uSD or a 64GB SKU would have been highly desirable. Maybe Sony are going to push some kind of cloud storage? 32GB of space I can live with, non-removable battery on the other hand is a no-no.

I was going from there official specs page, http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/prod...specifications

Which says the following
Internal phone storage: 1 to 1.5 GB*
Memory card slot: 32 GB eMMC
RAM: 1 GB
*Actual free memory may vary due to phone pre-configuration

Card slot implies an expansion slot, if it does come with 32GB of internal storage they could be onto a winner if they can promote it properly.


As for the padphone, I suspect if you get a call whilst in tablet mode, the tablet will either act as a speakerphone or have some really silly way of holding it upto your ear!
Knowing asus of late they will release various tabs and phones that do the same function but aren't interchangeable with newer models.

As for cloud storage, when they make the move to ics you get some cloud storage for pics and videos via google+ (it can be set to auto upload them) already get cloud storage for docs / books / mail / contacts etc only thing to come is music storage, but then i already get deezer free from orange

[scaryjim]

Lucky for us that we already have a very affordable, very powerful and high end 7" tablet that starts at £169 for the 16gb version - the Playbook.

This. Won a Playbook in a competition. Told the wife she could have it 'cause I wanted an Android tab. Then when it arrived it had the error 3001 "could not register" problems, so I got given it to "sort out". Finally got it working this morning, and it's a pleasure to use. After a couple of hours I'm edging towards prefering the OS to Android - lots of very intuitive ways to do things, nice smooth transitions / performance, and afaict the battery life should be pretty good (certainly it took days to run down completely in standby).

I might still end up buying an Android tab later this year, but only if the wife decides she wants the Playbook back when she gets a new blackberry on contract... That said, whilst I like the look of the ASUS, I'd really prefer a 3G tab to a wifi only. Hopefully the Huawei S7 301 will become available in the UK sometime soon...

[Lee H]

Asus phone... your having a laugh?

Why try and infiltrate an already saturated mobile phone market and make limited sales when you could bring in the cheap android tablet and sell more devices and make more money?

Someone at Asus needs to seriously re-evaluate the EMEA market ASAP