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scottjpalmer

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  #803692 22-Apr-2013 13:27
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"Pros"
Stylish packaging that is concise but sturdy and attractive.
Brilliant design and build quality - feels solid but light, looks amazing.
Near vanilla Android experience, so much better than TouchWiz.
HD displays are great to look at.
Very snappy due to 1.7GHz quad core plus 2GB RAM.
Padfone Infinity and Station firmware updates are prompted and seamless (although one dialog box called it a Padfone 2 station).

"Cons"
Android 4.1.2 at this stage, not 4.2 yet.
Wifi channels 12 & 13 not supported/enabled (Typical, that is what my router had auto set to.)
3rd party apps work fine on Padfone Station but the ASB one is portrait only and Facebook, Twitter etc are cellphone style not tablet style. Not a biggie as the desktop site websites are perfectly usable and more functional. See below
Padfone Station keyboard doesn't always switch to caps/miscealleanous characters display when pressing the buttons but the function is performed when you push the button anyway. Fixed by firmware update.

All in all I am most impressed. There are a few bugs which I have no doubt will be ironed out in due course. Love it!


EDIT: OK so it appears to do apps fine (apart from ASB which is locked to portrait, even though on the handset it does both), it is just Twitter and Facebook make ugly Android tablet apps! Here I was thinking it was just stretching the phone app to fill the screen rather than give me the tablet app, but this is how it is on all Android tablets! Tick that one off :-)

EDIT 2: Showing my Android tablet n00bness here, the ASB and Spotify apps only work in portrait on all Android tablets by the looks. Silly developers but that is less Padfone glitches :-)

EDIT 3: Once past the login screen the ASB app is happy in landscape. Air NZ mPass is portrait only.

EDIT 4: There have been numerous firmware updates over the past couple of weeks, very encouraging and refreshing! They even provide brief changelogs here.



JayTaicho
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  #803695 22-Apr-2013 13:36
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That's a nice looking phone. How do you feel about the size coming from a GNote II?

Having owned both Notes, I feel I couldn't comfortably go to anything smaller. I know it's only half an inch, but I had a play with the Xperia Z the other day, and I definitely noticed it. How do you feel about the size?

scottjpalmer

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  #803709 22-Apr-2013 14:00
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JayTaicho: That's a nice looking phone. How do you feel about the size coming from a GNote II?

Having owned both Notes, I feel I couldn't comfortably go to anything smaller. I know it's only half an inch, but I had a play with the Xperia Z the other day, and I definitely noticed it. How do you feel about the size?


Size is fine, I loved the Note II but I have adjusted to this quickly and being a little smaller and feeling a whole lot less plastic flimsy tacky I am sold!



WinPhne
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  #803721 22-Apr-2013 14:29
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Definitely a good looking phone and tablet combo. Its come a long way from the first padfone! Is there a risk of the phone screen scratching on the hard tablet surface or have they left a decent gap?

scottjpalmer

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  #803729 22-Apr-2013 14:39
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WinPhne: Definitely a good looking phone and tablet combo. Its come a long way from the first padfone! Is there a risk of the phone screen scratching on the hard tablet surface or have they left a decent gap?


Yep huge advances, as expected. Looks to be clear.

michaelmurfy
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  #803757 22-Apr-2013 15:57
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So keen, except Scott can you confirm there is no frequency support for XT?




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scottjpalmer

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  #803763 22-Apr-2013 16:08
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michaelmurfy: So keen, except Scott can you confirm there is no frequency support for XT?


Correct, box states 900/2100.

The grass is 2degrees greener on this side of the fence ;-)

michaelmurfy
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  #803791 22-Apr-2013 16:52
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scottjpalmer:
michaelmurfy: So keen, except Scott can you confirm there is no frequency support for XT?


Correct, box states 900/2100.

The grass is 2degrees greener on this side of the fence ;-)


Damn - I'll pass on that one ;)




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NZtechfreak
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  #803869 22-Apr-2013 19:16
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I picked mine up at lunch time, just activated my nano SIM (had better sort a nana to micro adapter for my HTC One and S4 that will be with me soon too!). Nice to have some 4Gs again, especially since they aren't attached to an Xperia Z. I note that with the metal body on the Infinity I immediately ceased worrying about the phone too much when setting it down on surfaces, I'm tending to worry about damaging the surfaces, that's how tough this thing seems built.




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Dratsab
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  #803890 22-Apr-2013 19:57
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scottjpalmer:
nakedmolerat: Is it waterproof?


No


Is it Scottproof?

scottjpalmer

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  #803891 22-Apr-2013 19:59
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Dratsab:
scottjpalmer:
nakedmolerat: Is it waterproof?


No


Is it Scottproof?


So far . . .

 
 
 
 

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NZtechfreak
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  #803896 22-Apr-2013 20:07
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Now using USB OTG to copy some stuffs from my memory card to the Padfone, nice.

Also, it has an inbuilt colour temperature slider - sitting here looking at near perfect whites. That pleases me more than is decent really. I think at this moment in time I might rate this panel ahead of the Butterfly one (and by extension the HTC One panel too).




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NZtechfreak
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  #804053 23-Apr-2013 07:56
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USB OTG testing notes:
USB drives working, including NTFS (first phone besides the Huawei D1 Quad XL to have that). PS3 AND Xbox controllers working out of the box. USB keyboards and mice working - best implementation yet on an Android phone with options for mouse pointer speed and ability to map the mouse buttons to a few different options. USB audio broken, which for me is incredibly disappointing. There is somewhat of a workaround in that USB audio does work with the app USB Audio Recorder Pro, but it is fairly horrible to use as a music player since its real purpose is to allow recording with a microphone.

Oh, and got a second (small) firmware update today...




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scottjpalmer

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  #804112 23-Apr-2013 09:37
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NZtechfreak: Oh, and got a second (small) firmware update today...


Have you seen a change log? I'm quite impressed as these must be some of the few production units in the wild?

Have you had the station keyboard bug as above?

LSCM
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  #804518 23-Apr-2013 20:02
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New member here loving the info so far - gonna swap to the infinity as my Note is too big and too small ;-)
I ordered the padfone 2 two days before the MWC announcement, luckily was able to cancel so now waiting for the official UK release of the Infinity.
Quick question to Scott or NZTechfreak, can you change icons on homescreen and app drawer using something like desktop visualizeR or do I need a custom launcher? Have always swapped out touchwiz in the past and now have a favourite icon set, but I like the idea of keeping Asus almost-vanilla experience.

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