Asus is planning to unveil the latest PadFone Infinity at a special media event in Taipei on September 17. The event will be led by company CEO Jerry Shen and early indications suggest the phone / tablet combo will look pretty much just like the current model with the one key exception being the Snapdragon 800 SoC tucked under the hood.
The current iteration includes a smartphone with a 5-inch, 1080p display, a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor, 13-megapixel rear camera and 4G LTE connectivity. The tablet portion consists of a 10.1-inch panel with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200 which is no slouch even by today’s standards.
The Snapdragon 800 would, however, bring the phone up to par with Samsung’s Galaxy S4 and Note 3. Keeping the external form factor the same means users will still be able to take advantage of accessories purchased for the current PadFone Infinity.
One of the major knocks thus far has been price. At 1,000 euros ($1,325) for the combo, it’s likely out of reach for most buyers. Asus is aware of this but they are able to justify the price by saying its less than an equivalent phone and tablet. That may have been true at one point but waves of lower-cost devices like the Nexus 7 and Nexus 4 have since changed the mobile landscape.
A price break is said to be in the pipeline but unless it is significant, the combo may still be out of reach for many.
