Review Part 1

ASUS PadFone 2 review

I’ve been selected by ASUS Nordic to be a test pilot for the ASUS PadFone 2 – the second generation (as the name hints) of Android phones with a docking station transforming it into a tablet.
As far as I know ASUS is the only manufacturer of such a device and personally, I’m intrigued by the idea.


It comes in two variants: a 32 and 64 GB version (there’s a third 16 GB variant in some markets). Besides the variations, there’s also two different colors: black and white. I’ve received the 32 GB black version from ASUS.

The packaging is fairly large since it’s not only a phone but also a tablet – not only that, but it ships with a fairly large bundle which is nice. The box is black with pictures of the product. The title reads “PadFone 2 2-in-1 Set” indicating this box contains both the phone and the tablet. I do believe it’s possible to buy just the phone.

As mentioned earlier, the bundle is not as barren as other phones. Inside you’ll find the phone, the tablet station, a short USB cable with an AC adapter, a sleeve/bag for the tablet, earphones and a wipe cloth.

Build and design

The phone has a very sleek appearance. It’s a large 4.7” phone, but it doesn’t feel over-the-top when holding it. I believe the design makes it less clunky to hold than one would otherwise assume. It’s thickest at the top and ends in a thin wedge-like design at the bottom. This actually makes it easier to get out of your pocket in my experience.

Starting with the front from the top we have a front facing camera, various sensors and of course the earpiece which is silver-colored in contrast to the otherwise black front front. Below that there’s the gorgeous 4.7” display with 3 backlit capacitive touch keys underneath. At the very bottom we have the ASUS logo and a black frame that spills onto the front of the phone. The sides are dominated by an aluminum frame which makes the phone stand out in a market with a lot of pure-black phones. It also makes the phone slightly cool to the touch and it makes the phone feel like a high-end smartphone. Other than the aluminum frame, the sides are where all the physical buttons and connections are located. There’s a headphone jack as well as a micro-SIM tray which is ejected with the use of a pin (which is included in the package). The right side holds all the buttons: the power button at the top and below that a volume rocker. The left side is clean and at the bottom you’ll find a microphone on the narrow aluminum frame and below it is where you’ll find a 13-pin custom mini-USB/MHL compatible socket designed by ASUS.
The back of the phone is black and made of polycarbonate with a rippled surface that extends out from the 13 MP back-facing camera. The ripples adds texture to the back of the phone and provides a better grip on the phone. The ripples are similar to the brushed aluminum design used on their Zenbook line of ultrabooks. To the right of the camera is a silver grill with a loudspeaker behind it and below the camera is the LED flash. Near the bottom you’ll find a Padfone logo.

Next up is the Padfone station. At the front is the even larger 10.1” display surrounded by a black frame with an ASUS logo at the top left. It has a front facing camera at the top center and is otherwise clean in the front design.

There’s a 13-pin socket at the bottom like on the phone. It’s quite strange but the socket is on backwards compared to the phone. The station doesn’t have any additional ports. For audio it uses the phone’s 3.5mm jack. The power button is located at the top to the left. There’s a volume rocker on the left side near the top which means all the physical buttons are easy to reach and near each other. The back is coated in a soft-touch material making it more comfortable to hold. There’s both a microphone and a very large mono-speaker on the back. And in the center is where the Holy Grail is: the dock for the Padfone itself. The Padfone slides easily into the back and is held firmly in place by a combination of things. Due to the clever design, I’m able to slide the phone in with my eyes closed. There’s brackets at the sides and at the bottom making sure the phone doesn’t fall out when the tablet is facing up. In addition there’s the 13-pin connector at the bottom and a rubber “brakes” at the sides that keep the phone from falling out whether you hold the tablet upside down or even shaking it while doing just that.
I’ve got to hand it to the ASUS design team on this nifty achievement. No matter how hard I try, I can’t accidentally drop or remove the phone. To get the phone out, I have to hold the nice, rippled surface of the phone firmly with one hand and the tablet with the other and then slide the phone out. It’s easier than it sounds and it works perfectly without being flimsy or feeling like a cheap solution.

Of course there’s also the measurements which are a crucial aspect to consider before purchasing any portable device. The phone measures 137.9 x 68.9 x 9 mm (LxWxH). The phone is quite thin and it could potentially be shorter without reducing the screen size if some of the bottom was cut off. However that would compromise some of the design and the internal design might not allow it either. The pad measures 263 x 180.8 x 10.4 mm (LxWxH). It’s almost as thin as the phone which is very impressive. The phone weighs 135 g and the pad weighs 514 g which gives a combined weight of 649 g. That’s less than the latest iPad and the screen of the PadFone set is larger. So the ASUS design team have really worked some magic to shave off any excess weight.

Connectivity, storage and ports

I’ve already mentioned the ports, but I’ll go through them again in more detail. There’s your standard 3.5 mm headphone jack at the top. The SIM card used in this phone is micro-SIM which is nice. In this day and age, I really think the mini-SIM (which has been the standard for many years) form factor should be phased out. It’s pointless to use so much space on extra plastic that serves no purpose. So it’s heading in the right direction. I actually had to order a new SIM card to really test the phone since my previous one was a mini-SIM I’ve had since 2005. I didn’t have the guts to modify the old card with a knife, so thankfully shipping only took a day or so.

The 13-pin data/power connector is not proprietary. It’s a modified micro-USB/MHL connector but the socket is compatible with a standard 5-pin micro-USB cable. I tried with the charger for my own phone. It works, but the plug doesn’t go all the way in. I don’t know why ASUS went with a custom connector. Perhaps it allowed for a thinner design of the phone or perhaps it was necessary to support additional features required for the setup to functional properly.

The phone has 32 GB eMMC flash memory, but it doesn’t have a micro-SD card slot which is disappointing for a high-end device. 32 GB might be enough for some, but being able to upgrade it is a feature every phone should have. To compensate, ASUS provides 50 GB of cloud storage on their own cloud service for free for two years. It is a nice gesture, but I’d take a micro-SD slot any day.

The mobile network connectivity is as follows:

2G:  EDGE/GPRS/GSM: 850/900/1800/1900

3G: WCDMA: 900/2100

4G: LTE: 800/1800/2600

This is the first 4G phone I’ve tried. My provider promises up to 40 mbit download and 20 mbit upload. The highest download speed I’ve reached is about 25 mbit which is a lot faster than any 3G speeds I’ve reached, so I can’t complain.

The Padfone supports 802.11 a/b/g/n WIFI, Bluetooth 4.0 and it also has an NFC chip that supports Android Beam so there’s plenty of methods to connect and share content.

Of course it also has GPS and GLONASS functionality.

Screen

The phone has a 4.7” Super-IPS panel sporting a 1280 x 720 HD resolution. IPS is an LCD display technology which is known for wide viewing angles and great color reproduction. S-IPS technology differs from standard IPS by offering less color shifting when viewed from an angle. Normally LCD displays lose color and contrast in oblique angles but S-IPS rectifies this and it simply put looks fantastic.

The PadFone station has a 10.1” IPS panel with a 1280 x 800 WXGA resolution. I don’t know why the station doesn’t have the same S-IPS panel as the phone, but I can only assume it comes down to cost. I’m slightly disappointed that ASUS didn’t go with a higher resolution display. A 1080p full HD display (or higher) would have been great, but from what I hear it’s due to compatibility and it allows the transition from phone to tablet to be quick.

Both displays are covered by Corning Gorilla glass with anti-finger print coating which means that the screen is more resistant to cracks and scratches however I haven’t drop-tested it and I don’t intend to. While I trust ASUS have made a durable product, I have signed a clause saying I’m liable for all damages to the product while testing. On the other hand, if I by chance do get to keep it, I wouldn’t want a cracked screen. I do have faith in the Gorilla glass though. My old phone also has Gorilla glass and I must have dropped it about 25 times and the only damage on it is a small scratch in the surface of the display that does not affect its functionality.

Hardware

The PadFone 2 is no slug. It has impressive specifications but that’s to be expected in its product segment. It has a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro Krait CPU which is architecturally similar to the ARM Cortex-A15 chips. The Krait CPU is a quad-core chip clocked at 1.5 GHz and it packs quite a punch. An Adreno 320 GPU provides the graphics processing power. It has 2 GB LPDDR2 RAM.
The PadFone 2 is a power house in regards to performance but that doesn’t mean that battery life is sacrificed. The quad-core Krait can power down all the way to 300 MHz to save power and the phone has a fairly large battery. It’s a non-replaceable 2140 mAh Lithium-polymer battery. To put it in perspective, it’s a tiny bit more than the Samsung Galaxy S3 and 33% more than the battery in the iPhone 5.

The PadFone station has a 5000 mAh battery and can be used a power pack for the phone itself which allows the station to function as a portable charger. This power pack mode will be discussed further in the software section.

The phone has both a front and rear facing camera. The front camera is your run-of-the-mill 1.2 MP camera which isn’t something spectacular. The rear camera is an entirely different story. It’s an impressive 13 MP camera with an f/2.4 aperture and 5-element lense. Asus has really one-upped the competition with this one. A lot of high-end phones are still “stuck” at 8 MP. The picture quality is great although I’m not a photographer, so I guess someone else should be the judge of that but for ordinary use it’s as good as it gets. The zero shutter lag function allows you to take multiple shots in rapid succession and the volume rocker can be used in the camera app to take pictures which makes the phone feel more like a dedicated camera. The video camera can record in 1080p at 30 fps, 720p at 60 fps or 480p at 90 fps which is quite an impressive feat. It’s a testimony to the monstrous hardware that the Padfone 2 is packing.

The phone has pretty large loudspeaker and the quality is actually good for a phone but that doesn’t mean it fixes the problem that all phone speakers have. It does lack the range (especially bass), quality and clarity of headphones or a large full-size speaker. What it does do well is play loudly and with a good enough quality to get by. External speakers or headphones are recommended nevertheless.

The PadFone station has an incredibly large mono speaker and the quality is quite amazing. It’s definitely on par with something you’d find on a decent laptop. I don’t like to complain, but I would have liked to see a stereo speaker setup. It would be fantastic for movie viewing but I realize that’s where headphones come in. I realize I’m demanding a feature that is probably beyond the scope of what ASUS is trying to achieve with the PadFone 2 device but if it had stereo speakers and the high resolution screen I mentioned earlier, it would be the ultimate portable hand-held movie experience. I’m certain that the hardware is beefy enough to play a blu-ray quality movie.

Software

The PadFone 2 shipped with Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich but the moment I turned it on, an update was available and I then updated the phone to version 4.1 aka Jelly Bean. ASUS delivers an Android experience that is close to stock configuration so to speak and quite frankly it’s delightful. I won’t lie. I’m the owner of a Samsung Galaxy S2 which means I’m currently running Android 4.0.4 with Touchwiz and I’m trying the stock Android for the first time hands on and I’m glad that ASUS went down that road. It’s smooth, beautiful and intuitive. ASUS have modified the interface but it’s without intruding on what Google has done. I hope ASUS is focused on keeping the phone up to date and doesn’t bail on their product like some Android phone makers do. I do believe sticking close to stock Android requires less work to be done by the manufacturer which should make it easier for the company to treat their customers to updates.

While the Android configuration is largely untouched, ASUS does ship the phone with a bunch of their own apps. I don’t mind that at all. No one forces you to use them which is the beauty of the Android operating system. For example at first I used the ASUS Studio app for video playback but when I ran into trouble with playing my files, I quickly downloaded my go-to Android video player MX Player which plays absolutely everything without a hitch.

Performance and benchmarks

I also did quite a few benchmarks including Epic Games’ recently updated Epic Citadel which now has a benchmarking feature. It runs on the Unreal Engine 3 which isn’t a new engine, but it’s a powerful one and the fact that it runs on Android is amazing.

Basemark ES 2.0 scores

My first test was the Basemark ES 2.0 Taiji Free. The PadFone 2 scored a maximum of 57.94. Keep in mind that vertical sync is enabled meaning that the frame rate is capped at 60 fps and fluctuations will occur. That means an average of 57.94 fps throughout the test doesn’t get much better as the phone will be locked at 60 fps most of the time.

PassMark Disk and Memory scores

PassMark Graphics scores

Time for a jack-of-all-trades benchmark. The PassMark mobile benchmarking suite tests a little of everything. It tests the CPU, the GPU, the RAM and the flash memory. The system score is 2594 which is good. The Galaxy S2 on the other hand scores 1529.

PassMark overall system score

Vellamo CPU score

Vellamo is a mobile benchmark created by Qualcomm. It tests HTML5 and CPU performance. As you can see in the screenshots, the PadFone 2 scores quite well. An interesting thing to note is that the HTC One X at the top of the CPU chart has a dual core Snapdragon S4 clocked at 1.5 GHz. That’s the same frequency that the PadFone 2 operates at, but the PadFone 2 has a quad core CPU. Both are produced by Qualcomm and I believe the quad core is a newer model yet it gets slightly outperformed by its smaller sibling. Maybe the PadFone 2 was a victim of throttling. I can’t say for sure.

Vellamo HTML5 score

GLBenchmark 2.5 fill rate and triangle throughput score

Next up is the GLBenchmark 2.5.1. Just looking at the numbers makes it hard to get a perspective on it for the average user, but basically it measures things such as how many texels (texture elements) and triangles can be drawn per second. It’s a good synthetic benchmark to see how powerful the SoC is, but not applicable to real world performance.

GLBenchmark 2.5 Eypgt HD scores

Here’s the Epic Citadel benchmark I talked about. An average of 52.7 fps on a benchmark running Unreal Engine 3 at a 720p resolution is impressive. I even put it in High Quality mode instead of High Performance meaning that it looks better at the cost of a little extra performance and as is evident from the score, it runs smooth enough to justify the tiny fps loss. Once again keep in mind that it’s capped at 60 fps due to vsync. 

Epic Citadel benchmark score