Asus’ PadFone series has always been an interesting design, melding the best of the phone and tablet worlds into one product that can transform into either. The basic design of the PadFone is a smaller phone, usually sporting under a 5-inch display, which gives you the ability to dock it into a larger tablet. In the case of the Asus PadFone X Mini you’ve got a 4.5-inch FWVGA (450 x 854 pixels) phone that’s able to dock into the 7-inch WXGA (1280 x 800 pixels) tablet. Inside the phone you’ll find a reasonable 2060mAh Lithium-Polymer battery that should get you through a day given the resolution of the screen, and docking it into the tablet will net you an additional 2200mAh Li-Po battery as well. This means that effectively the PadFone X Mini features a 4250mAh battery when combined and will absolutely get you through any situation without dying.
Inside of the PadFone X Mini you’ll find a dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z2560 and 1GB of RAM. There’s 8GB of internal storage with support for MicroSD cards up to 64GB for additional storage space. The PadFone X Mini support’s AT&T’s LTE network via the Intel 7160 modem and promises blazing speeds wherever LTE is available. At 149g the phone is super light and comfortable to hold, but it’s a little heavier when docked into the 300g tablet, making this 449g or nearly a pound (15.8oz) when docked. That’s not exactly the lightest tablet on the market by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s not horribly heavy either. The back of the device is laden with a nice soft-touch plastic that feels like a rubberized material for extra grip.
Last but not least is the software which is powered by Asus’ new ZenUI on top of Android 4.4 KitKat. ZenUI is designed to be personalized and to work for you instead of the other way around. Asus has packed the phone with all sorts of automated features like calendar view on the lockscreen, automatic equalizer modes for superior audio playback and more. You can see from the pictures that AT&T has packed the phone with some additional preloaded apps as well, but the phone is still zippy with those installed. The Asus PadFone X Mini is already out on AT&T, so if you’re interested in checking out the device for yourself head on over to your nearest AT&T store for a hands-on.
