Asus Padfone comes to Europe

Wanting to enjoy the transformable options of the Asus range of smartphone/tablet products? It seems that Asus is finally on the brink of bringing its new Padfone to Europe, as well as the as new Transformer Pad 300 and the Transformer Infinity.

The most intriguing and curious one is undoubtedly the Padfone, which takes the "transforming" concept one step further than the Transformers, by allowing you to open up the tablet to reveal its real brain: a smartphone.

The Padfone is expected to arrive in late May, and - unfortunately - it will cost 700€... plus 150€ extra for the keyboard dock. (Guess it won't be a big hit with these prices.) An LTE version should arrive later this year, by September.

More interesting,  the Transformer Pad Infinity (which will have a FullHD screen, in response to the latest Retina display iPad), which should be available on June 10th, and will cost 600€ for the 64GB WiFi version. If you do want it to "transform" into a netbook sort of tablet, you'll need to pay up the extra 150€ for the keyboard dock.

Last but not least, the "cheaper" Transformer Pad 300, which will only be available with 32GB (and the current "low-def" display) and will cost 400€ or 500€ (WiFi or WiFi+3G version).

Asus PadFone

Asus has proved it has lots of good ideas (do we need a reminder regarding who started the netbook revolution?) And even now surprises us with great looking inovative devices like the Eee Pad Transformer; even if sometimes those experiments don't turn out so well, as the ill-fated Eee Keyboard.

But it doesn't stop here, ASUS has just announced the PadFone!

Just like the Eee Pad transformer is capable os transforming a Tablet into a netbook, this PadFone can turn a Smartphone into a tablet.

When we consider a high-end smartphone carries an hefty cost, and most of its hardware is shared with tablet devices, this would be a great way to offer an affordable tablet option to a smartphone carrying crowd. After all, the "dumb-tablet" is little more than a LCD screen and battery - with the smartphone carrying all the smarts (CPU, GPU, Ram, Flash, etc).

The only thing needed to turn this concept into a big success is: a really competitive price that will make people want the tablet dock.
Even better, if Asus goes the extra mile and allows this PadFone tablet to use the Eee Pad Transformer keyboard dock, we could then have a 3-in-1 device: a smartphone that could be used as a tablet or netbook at will!

Looks like a winner! Now they just need to come up with a Kal-El smartphone to really show off what this combo can do.