PadFone Mini 4.3 preview

The PadFone Mini is going to be released in a few days, but today @evleaks has shown a press render of how the device will look like. ASUS has planned an event for the next December 11th in Taiwan to unveil the PadFone Mini.

The idea is at least attractive, as you can have both a phone and a tablet without purchasing two different devices. With ASUS PadFone series, you can use the phone and when inserted into the PadFone tablet shell, it becomes the tablet. The first device of the series, the PadFone Infinity, was launched a few months ago and it presented high specs, like a 5-inch Full HD 1920×1080 screen for the phone and 1920×1200 pixel resolution for the tablet, 2.2 GHz Snapdragon 800 processor, and 2 GB of RAM. It runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.

The PadFone Infinity combined a 5-inch smartphone with a 10-inch tablet. This new model is expected to join a 4.3-inch smartphone with a 7-inch tablet, a smaller and probably cheaper version of the main device. A recent leak showed that the phone could feature 960×540 pixel resolution, while the tablet will sport a 1280 x 800 pixel display. It will also probably have a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 with 1 GB of RAM and it is supposed to run Android 4.3 Jelly Bean.

Many companies have been releasing smaller and cheaper versions of their respective flagships. HTC, Sony and Samsumg have all been offering these more affordable devices with lower specifications with the idea to reach a wider niche of the market. It seems that ASUS is following the same path with this “mini” version.

There is still no information regarding the price and availability of the new Padfone Mini, but as the announcement is set in Taiwan, probably the initial launch will be limited to Asia and Europe. However, we need to wait for the official presentation to know all the details.

Sources: @evleaks, Phandroid.