technological convergence is the tendency for different technological
systems to evolve towards performing similar tasks sometimes it happens
smoothly and naturally like the way that Standalone pag your devices became a
basic feature on every cell phone other times whether it's because the industry
is trying to do something before the technology is really ready or because a
loan manufacturer is trying to shoehorn in features that just don't make any
sense this process feels more like a
science experiment gone wrong than something that you should spend your
hard earned money on so what is the ASUS
pad phone X is it the next natural step
in the evolution of phones and tablets that sees them ultimately become one
device or is it a Frankenstein monster that makes no sense and needs to be put
down let's find out shall
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let's start with the phone part of the pad phone X it's a flagship class
smartphone with all the usual fixings a surprisingly bright high contrast and
generally beautiful 5-in 1080p IPS plus display dominates the front of the
device with only an earphone speaker a mundane 2 megapixel selfie camera a
notification LED and a shiny logo to distract from it onto the edges the
trapezoid profile shape makes it easier for me to grip than other similarly
large phones on the top we find a 32 mm Jack and a noise cancelling mic on the
right the lock and volume buttons are easy to press on purpose while being
difficult to press by accident with nothing on the opposing side of the device to accidentally mash and on the
bottom is one of the most snug micro USB connectors I've ever encountered which
has the stealth benefit of actually being a mydp slim Port that supports up
to 1080p 60fps video output over display
port HDMI or VGA with a cheap passive adapter around the back we find a not
quite as grippy as I'd like removable plastic backing a megapixel still camera
a standard one-tone flash an unfortunately rearm mounted speaker and
I'm going to keep harping on this until everyone moves into the front and two
logos including an AT&T one yes this is an AT&T exclusive device in the US
taking this off reveals a micro SIM slot
and micro SD expansion slot and a beefy non- removable 2300 mAh battery that I
easily got a day plus out of while I was using it then on the underside of the
cover we see contacts for NX C with Isis Mobile Wallet support and PMA wireless
charging ASUS shipped me a replacement backing with an integrated screen cover
but I actually prefer naked phones in general and the build quality of it was
nothing special and unless you open up the cover first it actually doesn't even
fit into the included tablet accessory so I didn't use it which gives me a
great opportunity to talk about just how well this dock mechanism Works between
the textured low friction surface against the screen the combination of
soft touch rubber grips and plastic guides on the sides and the long micro
USB and dual prong system that penetrates the phone from the bottom it
works surprisingly well it's easy to slip in and easy to take out but it
won't come out by accident and it achieves this without needing a cluggy
locking switch or anything like that full marks for how they go together but
of course the pad part of the pad phone if it sucks then you're unlikely to use
it anyway so let's take a look around it shall we like the phone the overall
build quality is nothing groundbreaking it's got a simple plastic backing and an
unbranded glass front instead of the Corning Glass on the phone itself
there's a 4990 mAh battery inside that
can just charge the phone charge the phone while powering up the tablet or
allow the tablet and phone to share battery life with each other intelligently on the outside there's a
lock button a volume rocker a 1 megapixel selfie camera I guess you'll
do your video calling with it out of the dock two adequately loud front face
speakers and finally the 8 in 1920x 1200
IPS screen whose job it is to convince potential customers to buy this twoin
one device instead of a standalone phone
the good news here is that it gets plenty bright colors look great and
unlike most phone makers ASUS actually gives us some cool tools for adjusting
the look of the screen and the phone with their Splendid app and overall
Works darn well other than having sort of wider bezels than I would have liked
to see which leads us into the software pre-loaded app wise on top of Splendid
you get some AT&T stuff a sound tweaking app a power profile adjusting app that
lets you tweak screen brightness depending on what's running and a file manager that doesn't seem particularly
exceptional but saved me the trouble of installing ES file manager I guess or
Explorer rather but that's not what you really wanted to know you want to know
about the skin that ASUS is running over Android
4.4.2 it's all right I guess overall
responsiveness is solid but I found the keyboard laggy and quickly replaced it
with swift key multitasking is Snappy
but their text highlighting feels slow and my on screen buttons disappeared
sometimes the dialer and SMS apps are simple to use but I don't really like
some visual design elements like the notification pull down that looks out of
place with a light blue and white color scheme so in summary again it's all
right I guess they thankfully didn't change much interaction wise so there's
like no other random crap in the Google Now swipe up like LG's done with the G3
but the question this all raises then is why bother changing anything then why
not just go the mostly stock Android route that NVIDIA and Motorola have gone
and just build in the functionality that you need to differentiate your device
because they do have that their Dynamic display technology allows your home
screens and even certain apps to switch between tablet and phone view on the fly
when you dock the phone it's fast and allows the two device modes to feel
different from each other like separate home screen layouts for example while
still being the same device with all your content of available at a moment's
noticed I was surprised at how well it worked with certain things like the
browser and SMS app but it's unfortunately not compatible with Google
apps or really many thirdparty apps like games so often you'll find yourself
reopening apps as you switch modes thankfully it does that pretty quickly
though onto the camera ASUS brags a fair bit about it in their review's guide but
I didn't really find it that special it supports the usual exotic modes like
720p 120 FPS slow motion with AIO
thankfully and 4K recording I'll be it at only 12 FPS but while ASUS did a good
job of staying true to life without oversaturating colors like some other manufacturers and the app offers a
surprisingly deep amount of configuration the image quality with the
phone set to Auto how I do most of my phone shooting didn't take my breath
away I'll put some comparison test shots versus the one I made in the iPhone 5s
in the pricing and discussion Link in the video description which you'll be able to check out soon we're almost done
here but first a look at a couple of the optional accessories that ASUS sent over
for the tablet this tablet cover is just plain not very good uh don't buy it and
this keyboard needed a bit more work the hinge is all metal and feels really well
constructed but it's heavy and the tablet slips out of it fairly easily
when opening and closing it because it doesn't actually lock on in any way and
on top of that it's actually just a Bluetooth keyboard that needs to be
charged separately in everything which is disappointing coming from the creator
of the much more elegant Transformer series of tablets but all of that could
have been forgiven if the layout wasn't so bad I understand they eliminated a
column of keys here but who decided that
Chevrons and braces should be accessed with shift and question mark apostrophe
and quotations should be accessed with the unnaturally positioned function key
that is a deal breaker on what is otherwise a pretty useful tool
considering how much more productive you can be with a trackpad and a full
keyboard on Android which leads us to conclusion time if you want both a phone
and a tablet there are better Standalone devices that can be obtained separately
for the same price off contract with the added bonus of being able to be used
separately at the same time this is just a dummy on its own but what those other
devices can't do is be perfectly in sync
with the pad phone X your apps your data plan and even your battery life with
their various charging modes can be balanced and shared across your phone
and tablet experience it's unlike anything else that I've used before but
not not everyone buys devices off contract and this can be obtained for
200 bucks with a 2-year plan so if I was going to sign up for a new AT&T deal in
spite of it being a little bit thick and having build quality that feels kind of
last gen I would have to recognize that the features and versatility of the pad
phone X make it a serious Contender and I'm definitely excited to see what comes
next because I really like the overall concept and I think with a little bit
more refinement this can be one freaking
awesome combo type device thanks for watching guys like or dislike the video
according to how you felt about it leave a comment if you have something to say about the pad phone X I mean do you
think a tablet phone combo device makes sense for the future I'd love to hear
what you guys think I do read the comments on my videos you know um also I
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