Today, consumers are constantly facing a dilemma – do I need a tablet, or my smartphone is enough? I personally am facing this dilemma, where I think that something like a 7-inch tablet would be a nice complement to my Nexus 4. Asus however, took the merging step and made the PadFone. After few iterations, we get to take a look at how far Asus had come with their PadFone line of devices.
Here are some quick unboxing pictures for you to satisfy your lust for unboxings.
We got to take a look at the PadFone Infinity, which is the one that’s before the recently-updated version, the PadFone Infinity 2. The only difference is the lower clock speed of the processor and also it’s using the older Adreno 320 instead of the Adreno 330 in the PadFone Infinity.
Without further ado, let’s just right into it.
[nextpage title=”Design”]
The phone’s design is indeed very sleek, has a nice piece of glass in front of it with the earpiece disguised underneath chromed metal. The buttons are touch sensitive, which might be lovely for some. The top and bottom bezel are ridiculously thick for no reason, and it doesn’t have a notification LED in the first place.
The back of the phone has a chromed ring on the camera and a LED flash beside it, all embedded on a very beautifully designed brushed metal back cover. The battery is non-removable, but I don’t think that’s an issue at all. At the bottom part of the phone’s back however, reminds me of the HTC One’s line design that they did for their camera.
At the top, there’s nothing but a 3.5mm audio jack. Unconventionally, the speaker, power button and the volume rocker is found on the right side of the device. Also, the speaker grill itself got my confused as I thought it’s a button. On the left side however, there is nothing except for the nano SIM card tray, at the bottom there’s a micro USB port alongside with its proprietary docking pins.
Holding the phone in my hands feels natural, though to read for the button placement means I have to drastically change my group of the phone, and potentially dropping it as the phone has absolutely no grip. This really is a turn off since I am a left handed user, and that speaker grill was mistaken for the power button for far too many times!
For the tablet however, it is thanks to the space needed to accommodate the phone, the tablet’s back becomes an awkwardly shaped bell curve, and even made typing while laying the tablet flat on the table an impossible task. Thanks to the awkward shape again, weight distribution on the tablet is way off as the weight is centered in the center where the phone is at.
Speaker grills on the tablet dock is also cleverly placed, so that the user’s hand does not cover the grills obviously.
[nextpage title=”Ports”]This is where it gets interesting with the phone. As mentioned before, it has a 3.5mm audio jack at the top and a standard micro USB port at the bottom with two proprietary pins beside it. The phone does support OTG hosting, but only for the phone though. OTG does not work if the PadFone is docked to the tablet.
Another thing to note is that there is another micro USB port on the tablet dock which you can have a pass-through charge – meaning that you can charge your phone and the table together while docked. The OTG host however does not work while docked to the tablet. Not even data transfer through USB with your PC. The audio jack is shared with the phone, though.
[nextpage title=”Performance”]This is a top-end phone, and obviously you get some beautiful specs out of it.
- Quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 running at 1.7GHz and Adreno 320 graphics
- Super IPS+ LCD with 1080×1920 pixels on a 5-inch screen, housed under Corning Gorilla Glass
- 2GB RAM
- 13MP rear-facing camera, 2MP front-facing camera
- No SD card slot
- Has 32GB/64GB internal memory option
Surely some speed is ensured with such specs, and you might be wrong at all. Just look at the score it got from Epic Citadel, both in docked mode and undocked mode. It does however perform a lot slower on tablet mode.
As the PadFone does promise amazing performance but there are problems when the phone is plugged and unplugged from the tablet itself. I have no idea what happens, but no matter how many times you tried to kill the apps, it will still lag unbearably after some time of use if a reboot is not done.
Also, here’s an extra tip for those who are going to use the phone + dock like I do – Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, browsing, and watching videos together.
[nextpage title=”Screen”]The first word I’ll say about the screen is amazing. Second word I’ll say is that the screen is horrible.
The display itself is amazing – colours are sharp and vivid, even on the tablet too. The 1080p display really pops out with the colours produced by the screen. Wallpapers look absolutely stunning compared to my Nexus 4.
Though why would I say that the screen is horrible then? The fact that even the screen is a very large area to work with, the touch sensitivity is just way too high for any use at all. Imagine this – I can use the back of a metal spoon to navigate through the phone completely is not problem – that includes scrolling, typing – practically everything, by just some piece of metal. Even the back of my Beyerdynamic XP2 earpiece can do this!
The sensitivity is a big trouble as it just simply takes in unnecessary and unwanted inputs, causing your message to have a lot of gibberish or just screw up your navigation. Truly one big trouble here.
[nextpage title=”Audio”]You’ve seen the audio grill on both the tablet and the phone itself, and I’d that they’re not that different from any previous mobile Asus devices. The PadFone Infinity’s phone is loud even with a small grill, but the tablet dock will have to bear with the fact that the grill is just way too small for any type of audio, making the output sound like it’s captured in the tablet itself. Also, while audio is playing through the tablet dock, the back plate just vibrates way too much.
Asus does include in some of the software like Audio Wizard, as it was included in previous Asus products. The sound produce doesn’t disappoint at all, as it is loud and still maintains its clarity. The loudspeaker on the phone itself doesn’t have much bass and is biased towards treble, but then again the tablet dock produces a lot more bass than the phone-only counterpart, thanks to the larger area for the sound to come out of the grills.
Overall, the speakers on both phone and tablet mode is decent enough to be of everyday use.
[nextpage title=”Camera”]
The camera on the phone is purely amazing. As pictures to tell a thousand words, here are some of the sample pictures I took, some in HDR, in-doors, low-light and normal shots, alongside with some macros for
Another to mention is that the camera is superbly fast too, even on HDR mode. Focusing wise is decent and responsive, and has a lot of extra feature like hold-to-lock-AWB/AF/AE (auto white balance, auto focus, auto exposure) and has quite an intuitive interface where all commonly used settings are placed right in front of the user, unlike Samsung ones which require the user to search for it through its clustered menu.
[nextpage title=”Software”]There is a major flaw with the software when you’re changing between tablet and phone mode. Most of the apps require a restart – meaning to have it killed completely and relaunch – just to rebuild the graphics. If it doesn’t, then the graphics will run off, text size goes haywire and everything just looks ugly.
If you do allow it to kill the apps and relaunch however, apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger will be killed too, and you won’t be able to receive any sort of messages unless you manually launch the apps yourself, which is obviously another big turnoff for me.
There really is nothing special going on in the software part except a few PadFone-only features. You have something like Samsung’s KNOX feature right here on the stock launcher of the PadFone, where you can select one of your many profiles of the homescreen when you pinch-zoom-out at the homescreen. Surely some might think – what’s the use of this? Well, there are some use, especially when you can’t see the apps, you most probably won’t use it if it’s not that important or relevant at that time. Fairly useful for hiding apps like Facebook away from my face when I want it gone I’d say.
If you’re always looking for a dictionary while doing whatever it is on your mobile device, then the PadFone’s Instant Dictionary will make you jealous for sure. It’s a pop-up that shows the Instant Dictionary logo and that’s it. You tap to activate it, then highlight the word you want to search for and voila! you got it! It’s that simple, and Asus built this software right into the core of it.
Another app to mention is the Block List app, where you can actually block callers from reaching you. It’s a feature that I’d say nearly every one of us once wished we had such an app but just that it needed root capabilities before proceeding.
There’s another software where find it to be extremely useful called Birthday Reminder. Surely it isn’t something that everyone should bother, but I’m just sharing. Basically, it shows all the birthdays that are coming up in a rather clean, unified yet colourful manner. It also shows what zodiac and horoscope for each birthday too!
[nextpage title=”Hackability and updates”]This is the trickiest question to answer. It does have large potential to be customized, optimized and hacked with custom ROMs but then it’ll have to be synchronized with the phone and tablet, which gies the developers a big headache. However, the PadFone does have quite a few custom ROMs available for download now, though they’re not tested as much as others and there are only a few supporters to start with.
My advice is – skip the entire hacking and rooting part for this device.
As for updates, it’s hard to see if there are any updates that will come by
[nextpage title=”Battery”]
Everyone seeks for a device with a long battery life. As for the PadFone, it has a 2400mAh battery whereas the tablet dock has a 5000mAh battery. The above graph shows a day of intensive use, and obviously it got tortured very badly to have that much battery left after a very long day outside.
When you’re docked to the tablet, you can select a few power options – that is to charge the PadFone with the tablet dock’s battery or through the options shown in the screenshots below. There are also several options to have the phone perform in the way you want it to be when you have some other peripherals connected to it, or simply just got a phone call.
Price
The price for the tablet dock and and the PadFone Infinity itself costs RM2,699. A rather hefty price, I’d say, but then again you’re paying for a premium high-end smartphone that comes along with a tablet dock, where there are no other options to choose from if you want such features.
[nextpage title=”Conclusion”]
Surely the PadFone Infinity is a great device, but it doesn’t mean that it’s decent at all. Here are the pros and cons.
- Pros
- Comes with a tablet dock
- Amazing camera
- Great screen and resolution
- Decent build quality
- Convenient and quick transformation between phone and tablet mode
- Cons
- Horribly sensitive touch screen
- Speaker grill on the tablet dock too small
- Cannot type while laying tablet flat on the table
- Price is too heavy
- Lags a lot more on tablet mode
- Heats up like nobody’s business
- Have to relaunch the messenger apps when mode is changed
To be honest, I find myself using this device on its tablet form a whole lot more than as a phone alone. Maybe this is because I am a student after all, and I use it to view my documents, assignments and notes in class. A quick and beautiful 13MP camera is really amazing too, as I can take vivid photos of people sleeping in the classroom. Though the sensitive touchscreen does detect my written notes gliding across the screen, the convenience is still there, but the software tells me otherwise.
The score I give for this device is 6/10.
Seriously Asus, the idea of this device is just way too amazing to be abandoned. Look at how far you’ve come with this. Sure, there are many things to solve – physically and also in software – as the thickness and weight distribution is a problem, as well as the software killing apps like nobody’s business until I didn’t receive some of the more important messages on the day I discovered this problem. I’m seriously hoping that all of the aforementioned problems are fixed, that’ll really boost the review and also the sales of the PadFone for sure.
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