Android might not be the smoothest of mobile operating systems – I’ve seen it slow down even on dual-core chips – but that’s all about to change with the ASUS  Eee Pad Transformer Prime and its brand new quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor.

A brief hands-on I had earlier in the week revealed that it truly is a sea change in the responsiveness of Android, even more so than the Sony Tablet S, which until now is the smoothest Android tablet I’ve tested. With a whole range of goodies packed into this tablet, the Transformer Prime is easily the best Android tablet on the market right now.

The design of the Transformer Prime is heavily borrowed from the Zenbook, and that’s a good thing. The cold and shiny metal back with concentric circles looks and feels great. Slot the tablet into its keyboard dock and one can be forgiven for thinking that he/she is looking at a tiny Zenbook.

The front of the tablet is all Gorilla glass stretching from edge to edge. It’s smooth to the touch, and rather pretty if you can get past the huge bezel around the 10.1-inch (1280 x 800) screen. The Super IPS+ panel also looks crisp and vivid with excellent viewing angles.

The Transformer Prime is powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 3 processor, 1GB of RAM and either 32GB or 64GB of storage, which you can expand with a microSD card. At just 8.3mm, this tablet is thinner than both the iPad 2 and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, and yet somehow feels more premium than both.

On the back of the tablet lies an 8-megapixel camera with LED flash, and it’s quite the camera, with a back-illuminated CMOS sensor, large aperture, high-speed autofocus and colour enhancement. Of course, you have to be the sort who don’t mind holding up a 10-inch slab to take photos.

The bottom of the tablet houses the port which connects to a keyboard dock which the original Transformer was famous for. It fits flawlessly into the keyboard dock, transforming the tablet into a netbook or sorts which greatly increases productivity with a full Qwerty keyboard, USB 2.0 port and SDcard reader.

The dock also packs an additional battery, increasing the Transformer Prime’s uptime to a promised 18 hours. It folds up nicely, too, which makes lugging the whole package around very convenient. This is definitely not your run-of-the-mill third-party keyboard accessory.

The star of the show is undoubtedly the Tegra 3 chip powering the Transformer Prime. The quad-core chip makes Android unbelievably smooth, handles multitasking admirably, and has no qualms running 1080p full HD videos and 3D games.

And I have to say, the 3D games are very, very good. The smoothness of the graphics is particularly noticeable in the water effects. And in fact, if you hook up the tablet to a 3D TV or monitor through a handy micro HDMI port and run a game with 3D graphics (which means all the X-Y-Z axis data are present), the tablet is capable of automatically splitting the graphics on the TV and letting it pop through 3D goggles, while the tablet continues displaying the game in flat 2D. It’s hard to explain in words, so here’s a photo of it in action:

It looks absolutely gorgeous, and coupled with the built-in SonicMaster audio technology, the Transformer Prime is an excellent entertainment device.

The only downside is that the Transformer Prime ships with Android 3.2 Honeycomb. But with a promised 4.0 software update that should be on the way this month, that’s not much of a problem.

Good news is, the prices are not over-the-top crazy as well.

• Eee Pad Transformer Prime + Docking station: S$899 (GST Included) [UP: S$1,098]
• Eee Pad Transformer Prime (Tablet only): S$759 (GST Included) [UP: S$899]
• Docking station: S$199 (GST Included)

Simply put, if you want a top-of-the-line tablet that is not an iPad, the Transformer Prime is the one to get.

Heading down to SITEX this weekend? Here are some deals we spotted to whet your appetite!

Huawei Sonic (S$248, no contract)
The Huawei Sonic is an Android 2.3 Gingerbread phone with an unbelievably low price. And yet, the phone doesn’t feel that cheap, and it actually quite sturdy. Specs-wise, the phone does feel like it came out of the era of the first iPhone: a low-res screen, 600MHz processor and 256MB of RAM all add up to a phone which pales in comparison to the powerhouses out there today. But if you can look past all that and won’t use it to play intensive games, the Sonic is a decent low-end Android phone.

M1 Fibre Broadband (S$39/month)
M1’s fibre broadband promotion just keeps going! Introduced at COMEX earlier this year, the 100Mbps can be yours for just S$39 per month. M1 says “it’s a steal”, and we couldn’t agree more. The only catch: if you’re too invested in other telco packages – such as StarHub’s cable TV – it will be difficult to decide whether you should switch.

Lenovo IdeaPad Z470 ($799)
The Z470 offers a great bang for your buck: a Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, 640GB of storage space and 1GB of dedicated graphics for only S$799. Sure, the laptop isn’t the sexiest of beasts, but the specs let you pull in some HD entertainment and even play games at decent FPS rates. This would make a great laptop for those who use their computers as an entertainment device, with the occasional work thrown in, of course.

Acer Iconia Tab A100 (S$599)

If you recall, this was on our list of great gadget gifts under S$500, so what’s with the S$599 price tag? Folks, the 3G version of the A100 is here! For one hundred more dollars, you’ll be able to tot the A100 around, and it’s small enough to fit into a big purse. Again, it’s not a particularly premium device, and there’s a close competitor in Huawei’s MediaPad, but the A100 has more port options and even a micro SD card slot for expandable storage.

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer
This might be a relatively older model, but ASUS’s has a winning form factor here. Its specs are vanilla Android tablet – Tegra 2 chip, 1GB RAM, etc. – but ASUS baked in other features to sweeten the deal. A full-sized QWERTY keyboard accessory that provides additional battery life means this could probably replace your netbook. What’s more the full package even includes two USB ports and SD and micro SD card readers, and the audio is enhanced with SRS.

(This story first appeared on Techtalk, our technology content partners at Yahoo! News Singapore. Photos courtesy of Yahoo! News Singapore)

The ultrabook market just got more crowded with ASUS joining the party; the Taiwanese company officially jumped into the fray when it unveiled the super-thin Zenbook laptop here in Singapore on Tuesday.

The Zenbook sports a differentiating design with some remarkable innards while keeping the price relatively reasonable. But will this Windows 7 beauty stand up against its competition? We go hands-on to find out more!

Hardware & Design

The Zenbook’s form factor looks more or less identical to Apple’s MacBook Air: a sharp 0.11-inch edge on the front which slowly fattens at it slopes up to the 0.35-inch rear. It features a full-sized QWERTY keyboard that is pleasant to type on, and a large trackpad which supports multi-finger gestures.

But that’s about all the similarities there are in design.

While Apple went with a rough, brushed-metal exterior for the Air, the Zenbook is glossy and reflective. Its silver cover has a concentric circle design which radiates outwards from the centre, and is quite a pretty sight when it catches and reflects light.

The Zenbook’s base configuration for the 11.6-incher (1366 x 768) comes with an Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, 128GB of solid state storage, and sells for S$1,398. In comparison, a comparable MacBook Air will demand your S$1,588.

If you decide to plunk down S$1,998  for the highest-end Zenbook, you’ll get a 13-inch screen (1,600 x 900), an Intel Core i7 processor, 4GB of RAM, 256GB of storage space and an additional SD card reader. In contrast, a comparable MacBook Air (with a lower-res screen, in fact) will go upwards of S$2,200.

ASUS SonicMaster

ASUS has been trumpeting the superior audio tech found in its laptops for quite a while now, and the Zenbooks are no different. It carries Bang & Olufsen’s ICEpower brand, and the power of the music flowing from the Zenbook’s tiny speakers took us completely by surprise.

However, ASUS demonstrated the speakers with largely violin pieces, so we couldn’t get a sample of bass performance. Nevertheless, the sound quality is a far cry from the VAIO Z’s disappointing speakers.

First impressions wrap-up

Ultrabooks might have been slow to take off, but if the Zenbook is any indication, we haven’t seen anything yet. Beating Apple both at configuration and price, ASUS is giving traction to Intel’s ultrabook vision and providing for consumers a credible ultrathin alternative to the OS X universe.

This story first appeared on Techtalk, our technology content partners at Yahoo! News Singapore

The hype surrounding Internet or smart TVs these days begs the question: why would you want to check your Facebook on your TV with an awkward remote control rather than your touch-screen phone?

Apparently, TV makers think differently. From Samsung to Sony, they have been cranking out smart TVs as the next big thing for the living room, and well, now you too can get your old TV on this “next gen” goodness when you plug in an Asus O!Play Mini Plus set-top box cum video streamer.

Never mind if you can’t pronounce its name. This petite gizmo not only streams all sorts of video formats from your PC to your TV, but it also acts as a conduit for “smart” e-services that your neighbour’s spanking new TV offers.

Want to catch up on your holiday pictures on Flickr or Picasa? The Asus gizmo connects your TV to the Net to view the images. Want to watch some blurry online videos? Log on to YouTube as well as Mediafly.

There’s also support for Dailymotion videos as well as Facebook, after Asus releases a software update for the device in October 2011, so you more or less get some of the most popular “apps” coming on a smart TV these days.

As a streaming device, the Asus O!Play Mini supports the usual array of formats and extensions, including MKV and even the less common RMVB, so at the least, you can use it to deliver all the movies you’ve downloaded (or encoded) to your TV.

To hook up to your home network, there’s a useful Gigabit Ethernet port along with Wireless N connectivity, the latter of which will come in handy if you have a Wi-Fi router nearby.

We’ll have price and availability for the Asus O!Play Mini Plus for Singapore shortly. Meanwhile, here’s a breakdown of what video formats it supports.

Unless you’ve been living in the deep recesses of a Linux terminal somewhere in Antarctica, you would know that Apple has released the newest version of their operating system, OS X Lion, ahead of schedule. But it’s not Lion in which I’m interested.

Along with new software comes new hardware, and Apple has upgraded the MacBook Air to become more powerful than before. They’ll be phasing out the iconic white MacBook a little down the road. For all intents and purposes, the MacBook Air is now Apple’s most consumer-ish offering.

Apple has swapped in Intel’s Core i5/i7 chips, added Thunderbolt connectivity, a full-sized back-lit keyboard and their flawless multi-touch track pad, and promised that battery life would still be excellent. The design is as dead sexy as ever, and even the most hardened of Apple-haters cannot look at it without drooling.

One can say a comparative Windows laptop still offers better value, but to many consumers, specs don’t matter. As long as the computer boots up, lets a user do what he/she wants without getting in the way and then shuts down perfectly, it’s a good computer.

With just S$1,288, you can be the owner of a cool Apple laptop, and that’s all the reason many people need.

This is undoubtedly going to be something PC makers will strive to emulate in the coming months. In fact, they have started working on this way before the new MacBook Air – earlier this year at Computex, Intel unveiled what they call the “ultrabook” concept: thin, elegant and cost-effective machines that are not underpowered in any way.

Take, for example, the ASUS UX21, a gorgeous machine that a spec-chaser like me will pick over the MacBook Air any day. Ultrabooks are designed to run Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors, but since those won’t be due until the first quarter of 2012, the UX21 is running the latest Sandy Bridge processors.

And don’t think for a second that Samsung will rest on its Series 9 laurels, the highly competitive Korean company will surely have its answer to these developments with new tricks up its sleeves.

The stars are aligning – solid state drives are becoming more reliable; chips are becoming smaller and faster and more power-efficient; and manufacturers are perfecting their art of hardware design. Laptops seem destined to go the way of the thin, light, and user-focused MacBook Air, while high-powered notebooks will be relegated to a more select market.

Apple has played a major part in this; it understands that sex sells, and the MacBook Air is sexy. With the new model, the ultrabook concept will really take off. Don’t be surprised to see even more laptop makers pushing out their own forms of super thin form notebooks this year.

Some 100 discounted Eee Pad Transfomer tablets from Asus have been sold out within a day of a Singapore pre-order campaign launched by the Taiwanese firm, showing that alternatives to the iPad 2 shipping here this month are as well anticipated as the much-hyped Apple device.

Yesterday, Asus Singapore started taking early-bird orders for the Asus’ Eee Pad Transformer, one of the more interesting Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablets from the current crop, on its Facebook page. It went for a low S$699, along with a free docking station valued at S$199.

The 10.1-inch device usually costs S$898 and comes with the expected hardware on similar tablets to hit the shelves in the coming months – an 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 chip, 1GB RAM, built-in mini HDMI for sharing videos and photos as well as integrated GPS.

Asus had intended to run the promotion until April 26, but the 100 sets on offer were quickly snapped up within a day. Collection is on May 9 – 13, so it looks like the device will ship in Singapore in the coming weeks.

In Britain, the device is sold out after “performing far beyond our expectations”, says Asus. In the United States, the device is said to be delayed because of overwhelming demand.

Unlike traditional designs like the Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, the Eee Pad Transformer comes with a detachable keyboard that users can hook up and use like on a traditional laptop. Separately, the touch-screen device acts like a regular tablet.

So, the Eee Pad Transformer will be a boon to those who want the instant power-on for tablets, along with the ease of typing e-mail messages that they are used to on a laptop. Unveiled at CES early this year as part of a wave of Android 3.0 devices to challenge Apple’s iPad 2, the device has since been marketed aggressively online.

The question now is whether Asus can come into a market where Motorola, Samsung and Apple seem to have built up quite a bit of pre-launch momentum.

While the Eee Pad Transformer’s regular S$898 price may seem attractive compared to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Motorola Xoom, both estimated to ship in Singapore for around S$1,000 or more, this particular Eee Pad Transformer model does not come with 3.5G included.

Meanwhile, the basic Wi-Fi-only iPad 2 is going for US$499 (S$623) in the United States, and is expected to cost roughly similar when it hits the stores in Singapore this month.

I’m not sure why Asus has raised the price for the Eee Pad Transformer in Singapore, because in the UK, it is sold at only £379 (S$769) for the basic model.

It looks like the Asus device will rely on its attraction as a hybrid device to justify its relatively higher asking price in Singapore. Perhaps for some users, S$898 may seem like a good price to pay for both a tablet and a laptop.

We’ll update with a hands-on feature when we manage to try out the Eee Pad Transformer. Meanwhile, let us know what you think about this device in the comments below.

Eee Pad Transformer EP101 (TF101-16) specifications:

Availability: 27th March 2010, via M1 and StarHub, and all authorized resellers
Retail Price: S$638 (including GST)
Quick highlights: Windows Mobile 6.5.3 phone, comes bundled with preloaded navigation from Garmin and Tele Atlas, 3.5 inch WVGA 480×800 screen
Promotions: Consumers who purchase the Garmin-Asus M10 smart phone between 27th March to 2nd May 2010 can get a car kit at a discounted price of S$65 (usual price S$78)

Garmin and Asus made a big splash today at their media event for their upcoming launch of the M10 phone in Singapore.

Now Asus is better known for their range of netbooks and graphics cards, but they have been trying to break into the smartphone market for at least two years. I haven’t been really impressed with Asus smartphones I’ve reviewed in the past as I found that both interface and form factor wise were just so-so.

But the Asus folks believe that this phone is a breakout one that will be lapped up by consumers. Benson Lin, vice president and general manager of Asus’ personal mobile devices business unit, believes that their phone will do very well against the competition, like the upcoming HTC HD mini (also a Windows 6.5.3 phone) and HTC Legend (Android 2.1).

Here are his reasons:

• It’s one of the most value-for-money smartphones in the market, packing in great specs at low cost.
• It’s got one of the biggest screens in the market, a 3.5 inch 480×800 WVGA display, which is always a nice bling factor.
• Battery life is touted to be pretty long with its 1500mAh battery.
• Pretty good memory and storage specs: 512MB RAM and 512ROM, and a 4GB eMMC flash memory.
• And of course, the navigation application tie-up with Garmin and Tele Atlus, which Asus claims is exactly similar to the Garmin 1460 PND (typical Singapore retail price S$449). Consumers of course get it for free in this phone.

Having had a very successful launch in its home country Taiwan, Asus believes that this phone wil be extremely competitive in the Singapore market, and Benson expects that it will be one of the best selling Windows Mobile phone for 2010 Q2.

My take and a quick commentary:
I think price-for-specs wise, the phone definitely has merit. I didn’t get a chance to play with the interface of the phone, but form factor wise it seems decent.

The phone also does seem like it will appeal to those who need a good navigation device cum phone. Asus claims that their GPS and navigation software takes an average of about 33 seconds to get the first GPS fix, compared to other phones who typically take about two to three minutes. They also claim that the M10′s interface is designed to multitask, and you can both make and take calls whilst using the navigation applications.

With Garmin and Tele Atlus’ software inside, the phone is a more robust navigation device than using a free tool like Google Maps. For example, it has routing algorithms that can suggest new places to park your car if the one you’re going to is full.

However, navigation is just one application, and any smartphone needs to do more than just that of course.

Said Aloysius Choong, IDC’s research manager who leads APAC mobile devices research, who was at the event: “Nowadays smartphones are also moving towards social networking and connecting people. The platform may be more important than phone features.”

For example, Google Maps may be less feature rich, but it also bundles in things like location-based social networking (Foursquare). An android phone also provides easy integration with GoogleTalk and Gmail. iPhone has gained such a huge market — Apple has overtaken Nokia to become Singapore’s top selling smartphone vendor in Q409, according to Aloysius — in part due to the great number and quality of apps in the iPhone App Store. And Windows Mobile get plus points when it comes to being able to work with Word documents and Excel spreadsheets.

At least for me, the fact that the M10 is a Window Mobile phone is more important than the nifty navigation features or even some of the specifications of the phone.

At every computer show I always check out memory card prices just to see how much they have fallen. Here’s what I spotted at the Kingston booth at Hall 6.

For a comparison, look at some of the memory card prices from last November’s Sitex.

Prices of memory cards, especially the 8GB and 16GB varieties, have fallen. The 8GB micro SD has dropped from around $32 to $25 and the 16GB micro SD from $112 to $84.

I was on the lookout for a netbook, and went to both the Asus and Acer booths to look at their EePc and AspireOne range respectively.

Will probably trawl IT Show some more this weekend for more cheapo offers, but overall felt that I liked the Asus AspireOne 10.1 inch netbook (in blue) better because of the overall nicer finishing.

The price is $688 for the Intel Atom Processor N280 , Windows XP Home edition version, 1GB onboard RAM and 160GB hard disk. The weight is 1.33kg with battery (the whole point of buying a netbook is that it is light!), and it comes with wi-fi 8021.11 b/g and bluetooth, which is pretty standard.

There were no freebies packaged with the deal, but I was told the outside retail price is $799. Of the few resellers selling the Acer AspireOne at the IT Show, the Best Denki booth threw in a free upgrade to 2GB RAM which I will strongly consider if I go back this weekend to snipe a good deal.

If you find any great deals at the IT Show, drop a comment on this post and share your experience!

It’s been said that recessions come and go but life goes on at Sim Lim Square, that six-storey techie haunt in Singapore, for those unfamilar.

The best evidence comes from the way PC buffs snapped up Intel’s new Core i7s, as they hit the stores late last week.

So popular are these Core i7s that the supporting high-end DDR3 modules are near sold out. Popular retailer Cybermind, for example, now has stocks for only 3 x 1GB DDR3s from Corsair (S$255 with bundle). The 3 x 2GB packs (S$499 with bundle) are already sold out.

Not surprisingly, the most popular Core i7 chip is the entry level i7-920, which at S$493, compares flavourably against almost any older Core2 chips out there now. It’s also an overclockers’ favourite, as it is known to ramp up nicely with the right motherboard.

The top-end Core i7-965 Extreme, the king of the hill now, costs no less than S$1,685, and there are quite a few buyers, say Cybermind. The worst seller among the three new Core i7s is the i7-940, which is “neither here nor there” with a price of $945.

Among the equally expensive motherboards, the Gigabye X58 Extreme and MSI X58 Eclipse are, relatively speaking, the best deals around, with prices going between S$550 and S$620.

That’s when you consider that the excellent but pricey Asus Rampage II Extreme costs a whopping S$709. Yet you can bet there are crazies out there who’d whip out the money for that board during recession!

The official word’s out – the next big leap in Intel CPUs will come next month, when the chipmaker launches its much-awaited Core i7 chips, also known as the “Nehalem”.

An Intel blog written by its PR folks confirm that the new chip will be out in November, just as supporting motherboards featuring the new X58 chipset start appearing.

These Core i7 babies are the biggest shift in CPU technology since the successful Core and Core2 series of chips started dominating the market in the past couple of years.

The new Core i7 is a “tock” in the “tick-tock” evolution of Intel’s processor roadmaps, with “tick” being a smaller improvement (usually in the manufacturing process) and “tock” being a whole new microarchitecture.

The news will come at the right time as new X58-based motherboards that support the i7 arrive in shops. These boards  will come with a new CPU socket and likely require new DDR3 RAM (most of us except the extreme mobo lovers are still using DDR2 I assume).

For hardcore PC buffs willing to splash more than S$500 on a mobo, I can confirm that Asus’ Rampage II Extreme featuring the X58 chipset will be out in a couple of weeks’ time, while Gigabyte’s X58 offering will also be out in Singapore soon.

Which all means that, if you are going to upgrade soon and are so tempted by cheap DDR2 RAM, hold out for a few weeks if you can. I am one such user – my Asus Rampage Formula (X48 board) is giving me unusual BSODs thanks to my extreme clocking and modding, but I may hold up my RMA until the Core i7 appears!

Win an LG 42-inch LCD TV now.
Contest closes Nov 12, 2008.

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