Asus has managed to strike a chord with consumers in the niche “netbook” market in the US, but now it’s coming out guns a-blazing in the tablet industry with the Transformer Prime.
The successor to the company’s largely-ignored Transformer tablet, the Transformer Prime has a very slim 8.3mm form factor, but that’s just the beginning.
At an event called AsiaD this week, as reported by Engadget, Asus chairman Jonney Shih unveiled the device and confirmed that, as per earlier rumors, the new tablet will be powered by an Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor.
Beyond that, it is not just a tablet. It’s also a fully functional netbook when plugged into the external dock. It’s designed to actually look and feel like a portable computer, not an iPad slapped into a keyboard attachment.
Additional details so far are scarce, but there is a camera flash on the back of the device, and we also know it will be powered by Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
And, for those who have or will want to buy the cheaper earlier Asus tablet, the company also plans to update those models to Ice Cream Sandwich as well.
Clearly Asus is trying to emerge as the technological leader in the Android tablet race. After all, things are about to get heated up substantially with the launch of the Amazon Kindle Fire.
Asus promised to provide more details at a media event on November 9.
