Nothing like a leaked video to get you pumped about a product. Of course, we’re not suggesting that ASUS went out of its way to post information about the forthcoming Fonepad 7, but either way, that teaser piqued our curiosity. Now that ASUS has officially unveiled the product here at IFA, though, we can confirm these are fairly minor upgrades to the company’s original 7-inch, talk-enabled phone / tablet crossbreed. Namely, ASUS moved to glossy back cover and (as we saw in that video) added an extra speaker on the front side.
Not that this isn’t a good speaker setup. A number of companies have tried and failed to perfect the art of speaker placement, but we quite like what ASUS did here. For starters, they actually, you know, face you while they’re playing. Quite the innovation, we know. And while they’re placed near where you hold the device when it’s in landscape mode, it’s quite easy to grip it without muffling the sound. That said, we weren’t able to get the sound all that loud when we played around with it in the echoey halls of Berlin’s Hotel de Rome. The sound was easily drowned out by the admittedly larger MemoPad 10.%Gallery-slideshow79397%
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile, ASUS
