The ASUS Padfone, first announced and displayed at COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2011, is the unconventional marriage of an Android smartphone and tablet. We take an exclusive first look at the latest iteration of the design which should hit retail stores in April…

A Quick History Lesson

 

ASUS first introduced the radical Padfone concept at COMPUTEX Taipei 2011 last year

 

The phone component of that initial non-working concept was based on an older Garmin-ASUS smartphone

 

Phone docked into a full-sized tablet

 

Mockup of the phone-tablet's Android operating environment

 

Several web sites since then have also reported unfounded rumors that the Padfone will be powered by Nvidia's Tegra 3 quad core SoC, which was quashed by ASUS later at CES 2012  when they revealed that it will have a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 8660 1.5GHz dual core in it