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ASUS' new Fonepads are solid tablets, but still awkward for making calls
ASUS' new Fonepad 7 and 8 are sleek, well-built Android tablets equipped with 3G connectivity and dual SIM slots, along with a speaker and mic. Whether making calls on a gigantic slate is something you're into is another question, but if you're at all interested in a tablet that can pull double duty as your handset, ASUS' products are the best ones you could ask for. And they work quite well as tablets, too.
New Fonepads from ASUS offer 3G, extra processing power
It wouldn't be an ASUS event without a new device that functions as both a handset and a slate. And, as expected, the Taiwanese company delivered on that front here at Computex; CEO Jonney Shih announced the Fonepad 8, along with a 7-inch version, the Fonepad 7. A follow-up to ASUS' Fonepad 7, the new devices sport similar specs, with improved performance and a slimmer design. Oh, and they boast a 64-bit processor that supposedly crushes other phones when it comes to real-world benchmarks.
ASUS refreshes its Fonepad 7 phone / tablet with dual speakers, we go ears-on (video)
Nothing like a leaked video to get you pumped about a product. Of course, we're not suggesting that ASUS went out of its way to post information about the forthcoming Fonepad 7, but either way, that teaser piqued our curiosity. Now that ASUS has officially unveiled the product here at IFA, though, we can confirm these are fairly minor upgrades to the company's original 7-inch, talk-enabled phone / tablet crossbreed. Namely, ASUS moved to glossy back cover and (as we saw in that video) added an extra speaker on the front side. Not that this isn't a good speaker setup. A number of companies have tried and failed to perfect the art of speaker placement, but we quite like what ASUS did here. For starters, they actually, you know, face you while they're playing. Quite the innovation, we know. And while they're placed near where you hold the device when it's in landscape mode, it's quite easy to grip it without muffling the sound. That said, we weren't able to get the sound all that loud when we played around with it in the echoey halls of Berlin's Hotel de Rome. The sound was easily drowned out by the admittedly larger MemoPad 10.
