Asus has taken the wraps off of the Eee Pad Transformer 300 series at MWC today. This model was leaked last month, and while the series (300) name led us to believe that this would be a full upgrade from the Transformer Prime (200), it seems like Asus is actually trying to create a more affordable mainstream version of the Transformer Prime. Here’s an intro video from Chippy with his hands on the Asus Eee Pad 300 series:

The Eee Pad Transformer 300 is based on the quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 platform and running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, just like the Transformer Prime, but lacks some of the premium materials found on previous versions of the Transformer. There’s also new colors available (white, blue, and red) to spice up the look a bit. As with the other Transformers, the keyboard dock on the Transformer 300 is optional, though it isn’t clear if there is interoperability between the keyboard of previous generations and that of the 300 series.

Chippy suspected from his hands-on with the Transformer 300 that Asus is aiming for cheaper prices and mainstream adoption. I think we can conclude that this is the case; Asus specifically mentions that the Transformer 300 is “the ideal tablet for anyone buying on a budget, and for those looking to get more out of their tablet.” We’ll see just how low Asus can price the Transformer 300, but it’s great to know that they plan to offer a device with the latest Nvidia Tegra 3 platform and a mainstream price.

No word on exactly what the Transformer 300 price or release date is just yet, but Chippy has his feet on the ground in the heart of MWC and will surely relay it back to us at here Carrypad HQ if he hears anything about it. You can see Asus’ Transformer 300 mini-site here.

Here is the most detailed list of specifications for the Transformer 300 that Asus has yet released:

Mobile World Congress, the annual mobile tech trade show held in Barcelona , is fast approaching. All manner of mobile tech companies will be debuting new products, and Asus has been releasing brief teasers of their upcoming announcements. Their latest teaser suggests that Asus may beat Apple to the market with a high-resolution tablet.

Yesterday’s teaser showed three nesting (aka Matryoshka) dolls with the tagline “Divided we stand. Together we rock.” Many are (probably rightly) attributing this to the forthcoming Asus Padfone which is a phone that can dock into a tablet which can dock onto a keyboard to become a smartbook.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81FDcFtPZqs

Asus’ latest teaser shows pretty clearly the the company intends to offer a tablet with a high resolution (as Apple likes to call it: “Retina”) display on an Android tablet. The teaser shows a box filled with colored spheres (representing pixels), then shows the same setup but with a greater number of spheres that are smaller in size. The tagline is “Eager to see more detail? Twice the detail, twice the fun.” This is an obvious analogy to screen resolution, and if they really are doubling the resolution of their (1280×800) Android tablets, then you’ll be looking at a 2560×1600 resolution tablets in the near future. This would put the PPI at 298.9, beating out the 2048×1536 (261.22 PPI) display that is expected to be included with the iPad 3.

A few weeks ago, a new Asus tablet was spotted which was purportedly the ‘TF300T’, could this be the high resolution tablet that Asus will be showing off at MWC?

Chippy will be at MWC this coming week to cover all of the action, stay tuned for the official announcement from Asus.

Edit: As a few people pointed out, the resolution might not be 2560×1600. In the video, Asus might be referring to actual pixel count when saying “twice the detail” rather than the horizontal and vertical values of the resolution. If this is the case, Asus would be talking about going from 1,024,000 (1280×800) pixels to 2,048,000 (~1920×1080). My apologies for the confusion, we’ll know for sure soon!

The Asus Padfone seemed to have gone into hibernation after it’s Computex debut way back in May. It popped up at CES and now, according to a story from MoDaCo, the Asus Padfone will be officially announced at Mobile World Congress (MWC) at the end of February in Barcelona.

Using the world ‘announced’ might be a bit confusing because Asus already officially revealed the device. However, the initial unveiling at Computex was more of a demonstration of a concept design, while I would expect the announcement from MWC to show off production model with the inclusion of pricing and release information.

The Asus Padfone has a heretofore unique form-factor which allows you to dock a seemingly regular smartphone with a tablet-dock to essentially turn the phone into a tablet. All of the memory, processing, sensors, and cameras are contained within the phone itself, while the tablet-dock is nothing more than a 10.1″ 1280×800 touchscreen and battery.

Will the Asus Padfone Have Nvidia Tegra 3?

Paul from MoDaCo expects the Asus Padfone to be announced newly designed with Nvidia Tegra 3, but I’m not so sure. We saw a number of phones announced at CES 2012 based on Tegra 3, and while space probably isn’t a concern, price might be. Running the latest and greatest hardware in addition to selling the Padfone with an external screen/docking unit (and battery!) might make the phone impractically expensive. It wasn’t announced officially that the Asus Padfone was running Tegra 2 back in May, but we’re banking on that given the time frame in which it was announced. That doesn’t necessarily prevent them from redesigning the device for Tegra 3, but if they want to actually move a significant number of Padfone’s, they’ll need to be able to sell it (dock included) no more expensive than what a decent tablet would cost.

In the US, smartphones are heavily subsidized by carriers, but carries here tend to steer clear of less established form-factors. If Asus wants to sell the Padfone in the US, they’ll probably be selling to customers, rather than carriers. Without the carrier subsidy, the Padfone could be looking at a $600+ pricetag — keeping costs down would be vital to US sales. However, being a Taiwanese company, the US probably isn’t their primary demographic.

You can be almost certain of an external redesign of the prototype version of the Asus Padfone that we saw in May and at CES; that much is clear. The Padfone was still running an Android 2.x build when it was announced which means it had the standard four ‘Android buttons’ at the bottom of the phone screen. As of Android 4.0 ICS, the buttons are now built into the software, making the hardware buttons on the Padfone usless. The production model will have these removed, and I imagine Asus will update the docking screen to give it a more contemporary look.

I don’t think there’s enough evidence right now to say whether or not the Asus Padfone will have Tegra 3. I’m very interested to see how Asus plays this one. There’s always the chance that they include Tegra 3 at extra cost, but sell the docking-tablet separately (as they do with the Transformer and Transformer Prime).

Asus Padfone and Android 4.0

It seems Asus always had the intention of using Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to provide both a tablet or phone interface depending upon whether or not the phone is docked. When it was originally demonstrated, Android 4.0 ICS was still a ways off. At CES, however, Asus showed-off the Padfone running the very latest Android build (still prototype hardware). Curiously, it was also confirmed that the Padfone uses the same docking connector as the original Transformer — presumably the keyboard dock could be used with the phone (though it might need hacking). Here’s the Asus Padfone running Android 4.0 ICS, thanks to our friends at Netbook News:

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime is shaping up to be a hot seller with its quad-core Tegra 3 CPU/GPU combo and its attachable keyboard. Just a few days ago, our pal Ritchie got his hands on the Transformer Prime and produced a great overview video of the device. Now he’s drilling down the specifics.

Ritchie has fielded a number of questions from folks interested in the Transformer Prime, and prepared a whopping 5 new videos for your viewing pleasure. We’ll drop one here, but if you’d like more, certainly go visit the post over at Ritchie’s Room.

The Transformer Prime is still not featured on the front page of Asus.com, and a support page hasn’t gone live yet, but if you’re sneaky, you can find the Transformer Prime’s official product page on Asus’ website.

It would appear as though the product page has gone live earlier than intended as Asus is still advertising for the original Eee Pad Transformer on the front page of their site. Additionally, the Transformer Prime micro-site still shows the “Prime is Coming” teaser text. Though we already know most of what there is to know about the Transformer Prime, the official product page gives us the first official list of specs as well a the user manual of the upcoming Tegra 3 tablet.

The launch of the official page may indicate that a Transformer Prime release date is not far off.

Don’t miss the Prime first look hands-on video from Ritchie’s Room.

Colors

We can also finally see the two colors (Champagne Gold, and Amethyst Grey) that the Transformer Prime will be available in, thanks to some new photos:

Manual

Though most of us glaze over gadget manuals, I’ve come to find that there are occasionally great tidbits to be found within. Thus, I’ve done you the courtesy of pulling out some of the good nuggets from the Transformer Prime manual so that you don’t have to.

From the manual we can see that you won’t get anything too exciting out of the box, which comes with nothing but the Transformer Prime itself, a USB charger, regional wall adapter, docking-to-USB connector, manual, and warranty card. And yes, you read that correctly — the keyboard is not included standard, it’s an accessory that will cost you $149.

The manual also tells us that the trackpad on the keyboard dock has two defined areas that will function as left and right mouse clicks. This will surely be handy for VPN applications (like the built-in ‘My Desktop’) and make the Transformer Prime even more capable of functioning like a full-blown computer:

Among other keyboard shortcuts, pressing the Fn-key along with the Up or Down arrow keys will jump to the top or bottom of a given page respectively.

We can also peek at some of the customizations that Asus has made to Honeycomb which runs on the Transformer Prime. Most interesting among the adjustments to the quick-settings panel. There is a special screen-brightness button that you can press to boost the screen-brightness for better outdoor readability. There’s also a performance toggle which can switch between Power Saving, Balanced, and Normal modes. It’s unclear whether or not these settings will impact the clock speed of the Tegra 3 hardware or simply adjust some of the system settings such as screen timeout and background app updates:

For the original Asus Eee Pad Transformer, one of the popular tweaks was to download a widget that would independently display the battery life of the tablet and the keyboard; by default the system only specified the overall battery levels. This time around, Asus is adding that funtionality out of the box. Thanks to the Asus Battery Level widget, you’ll be able to see the charge of the keyboard and the tablet without having to download any third-party applications or widgets. In addition to the widget, you’ll be able to see the battery levels on the notification bar and in the quick-settings panel.

If you’re curious about the supported media formats for encoding and decoding on the Transformer Prime and Tegra 3, the manual gives us full details:

• Decoding (audio)
  • AAC LC/LTP
  • HE-AACv1 (AAC+)
  • HE-AACv2 (Enhanced AAC+)
  • AMR-NB
  • AMR-WB
  • MP3
  • FLAC
  • MIDI
  • PCM/WAVE
  • Vorbis
  • WAV a-law/mu-law
  • WAV linear PCM
  • WMA 10
  • WMA Lossless
  • WMA Pro LBR
• Decoding (video)
  • H.263
  • H.264
  • MPEG-4
  • VC-1/WMV
  • VP8
• Encoding (audio)
  • AAC LC/LPT
  • AMR-NB
  • AMR-WB
• Encoding (video)
  • H.263
  • H.264
  • MPEG-4

Asus is including the SuperNote app which will let you take hand-written and typed notes, completed with photos, audio recordings, and more. Without an active digitizer and stylus this seems somewhat out of place, but I suppose this will be enjoyed by those who can get along with capacitive styli.

Source Code

In the download section of the official Transformer Prime product page is a section called ‘Source Code’. This 89.9MB file is presumably the Transformer Prime’s software image, and might be useful for those hacksters over at the XDA Developer Forums.

Pricing for the Transformer Prime starts at $499 (+$149 if you want the dock) but the release date has not yet been announced.

The Transformer Prime is the first tablet to be announced with the Nvidia Tegra 3 platform, and while the price and release date have yet to be officially announced, it is likely going to be in even higher demand than it’s predecessor, the Eee Pad Transformer.

Our pal Ritchie has a detailed writeup of his hands-on experience with the Transformer Prime along with some great photos to whet your appetite of this thin and powerful device. If you’re the visual type, he’s also prepared a video summary of the Transformer Prime for your enjoyment:

Ritchie says that the Super IPS+ display looks great, and this will be an upgrade over the original Transformer’s regular IPS display, while retaining the durable Gorilla Glass. Asus added a display brightness boosting function to the Transformer Prime which is intended for better viewing during outside use.

Tegra 3’s performance is also in full force; it appears as though it can handle 720p and 1080p video with no problems. That could make the Transformer Prime a great portable home-theater (thanks to the micro-HDMI port), with the only problem being the relatively weak Android codec support. I’m curious to know how well the Transformer Prime can handle software video decoding that comes along with some third-party applications.

The unit itself is slimmer and lighter than the iPad 2, and attached with the keyboard, the Transformer Prime is rated to run for 18 hours which is pretty awesome.

For more detail about the Transformer Prime, don’t miss Ritchie’s write-up.

Unless there are any unforseen issues leading up to it’s launch, the Transformer Prime is certainly setting the new bar for Android tablets, and I would go as far to say that Apple better pay attention as well. The Transformer Prime has nearly everything one could want in a tablet today except for a little Ice Cream Sandwich action.

I’ve posted a detailed review of the ASUS UX21 over at Ultrabooknews and even if you think the device is too big, I encourage you to read the article to learn about the platform and it’s differences to Oaktrail, Cedar Trail and other low-power platforms. The UX21 idles down well and gets things done so fast that the total battery used for tasks is, in many cases, less than on a low-power platform. The effect is known as ‘HUGI’ by Intel – Hurry Up Get Idle – and it seems to work.

The platform provides a high dynamic range of operating modes from simple web-based work in a netbook-like 8W power to gaming and video editing to a quality that you would never achieve on an Atom-based platform.

It’s interesting to think of where this could lead to. Will Atom-based devices just dissolve into a low-cost category? Will there be an interesting option for ‘Ultraslates’ in the future? Could Intel create an even more efficient, smaller and small platform based on their leading technologies. My feeling is ‘Yes’ and I talked about it in an article earlier this year.

I suggest reading the UX21 article though for more details and proof that there are some Ultra Mobile possibilities with the high-end mobile computing platforms.

ASUS UX21 Full Review

Update: Full review including live session is now available.

It’s all too quiet over here at UMPCPortal. I’ve been working on a Samsung Series 7 Tablet (XE700) live review but it looks like it has been delayed for some reason. I’ll keep you posted on that but in the meantime, you might be interested in something that is built on the same platform. The 11.6″ ASUS UX21 is heading my way so of course I’ll be setting up a live review.

As a reminder, it’s netbook size and weight with a whole load more power. Up to 10x more CPU power than UMPCs we’re used to. It weighs 1.1KG and brings in 3-5 hour in-use battery life. Don’t forget that you’ll be able to use external power packs to boost that at minimal weight gain. It has a lightning-fast SSD too which helps you get things done quicker

The UX21 will be with me on Monday but the live session is likely to be on Thursday or Friday. I’ll update this post with the details and send info out on Twitter.