Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime unveiled

I guess the PR department in Asus just couldn’t take the hounding anymore from journalists. Just a few hours back, Asus officially unveiled their greatest weapon, the Transformer Prime. This 10.1-inch Honeycomb beast raises the bar a notch higher, as it becomes the thinnest (8.3mm), lightest (586g) and most powerful tablet, whenever it launches in the market. The Prime will go on sale worldwide, starting December, with the 32GB model for $499 and the 64GB one for $599. There’s no mention about 3G data support, so we assume the Wi-Fi only models will be available, initially. The keyboard dock will be sold separately for $149.

The best tablet yet?

All our previous suspicions and rumours have been realised with the Prime. Some of them include the new 1280 x 800 Super IPS+ display with a Gorilla Glass protective covering. The display is capable of a blinding 600nits of brightness, which is higher than even some desktop displays. Powering it is Nvidia’s latest Tegra 3 SoC (System on Chip), which is a quad-core monster living inside this 8.3mm thin aluminium chassis. Another area to grab the ‘first-ever’ title is the camera, which is now an 8MP autofocus shooter with an LED flash. It also features a larger F2.4 aperture and back illuminated CMOS sensor (like the iPhone4), which is the first for a tablet. Other features include touch-to-focus, depth of field and low-light noise reduction.

Transformer Prime doing its thing

In the sound department, Asus have added their SonicMaster technology for better audio. Other features include microSD card slot, 3.5mm combo audio jack, micro HDMI and the dock will feature a USB 2.0 port and full sized SD card slot. The 22Wh battery in the tablet should be able to churn out 12hrs of battery life and this is without the dock. Software wise, the apps will be similar to the ones we saw in the Transformer (TF101/G), which included SuperNote and Polaris Office. This will ship with Android (3.2 mostly) Honeycomb, initially, but will be getting Ice Cream Sandwich in ‘early December’. Here are the highlights once more:

• 10.1-inch Super IPS+ capacitive touchscreen with a 1280 x 800 pixel resolution

• Wi-Fi, DLNA with hotspot creativity

• GPS with A-GPS support

• Bluetooth

• 8 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, video capture up to 1920 x 1080 resolution

• 3.5mm earphone socket

• 32GB/64GB internal memory, expandable up to 32GB

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