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Up close with ASUS' quirky Windows laptop/Android phone hybrid
Computex hasn't even officially started, and we're already blown away by ASUS' rather eccentric Transformer Book V from this morning. The name doesn't tell the whole story; it's actually a Windows 8.1 hybrid laptop that lets you dock an Android phone on its back -- a bit like the PadFone concept, except the tablet has its own brain. That's right, you can use both the 12.5-inch tablet and the 5-inch LTE phone simultaneously with their own brains. When docked, you're shown the phone's live Android phone interface within Windows (as pictured above), but you can also toggle the full Android tablet interface. It's easily the most versatile product we've seen of late, but is it practical?
ASUS Transformer Book V is a Windows hybrid laptop with a detachable Android phone
Wow, just wow. ASUS has just announced the Transformer Book V (pronounced "five"), a Windows 2-in-1 laptop with a detachable Android phone. No, this isn't the Windows Phone-powered PadFone that we've been waiting for, but the package is still pretty mind-blowing. Let's break it down. First of all, the 12.5-inch tablet/laptop hybrid part has its own Windows 8.1 brain running on Intel Core architecture. Then you have the 5-inch, ZenFone 5-like Android 4.4 phone, which is the first to run on Intel's 64-bit quad-core Atom (Moorefield) chip with LTE radio. When docked, the phone's Android interface is displayed within Windows 8, and you can also switch to the full Android tablet interface. In other words, you get five modes in total (hence the name): a Windows tablet, a Windows laptop, an Android phone, an Android tablet and an Android laptop.
