Asus Chairman Johnny Shih talked with Walt Mossberg onstage at the AsiaD conference the other day, and while there he revealed that the sequel to the successful Asus Eee Pad Transformer, formerly referred to as the Transformer 2, will be officially known as the Transformer Prime. Well, I suppose Samsung wasn’t using it since the Nexus Prime turned out to actually be named the Galaxy Nexus. The Transformer Prime won’t contain the AllSpark, but it will be the first quad-core Android tablet. It will run the new Nvidia Tegra 3 chip, code named Kal-El. They’ve even released a teaser video, which doesn’t reveal much at all really:
The Tegra 3 has its own teaser, which reveals even less. The original posting was pulled, but, unsurprisingly, someone has already reposted a copy:
I’m looking forward to the official announcement on November 9th, especially pricing and a release date. As you may recall from earlier posts, a few months ago I was trying to decide between which Android tablet to pick up. In the end I decided the Transformer was the one for me. But I had some other things to deal with and I put off buying it, and then the Osborne Effect kicked in as rumors of the Transformer 2 launching before the end of the year with Kal-El and Ice Cream Sandwich appeared. And now we know it will have Kal-El, and reports are it will ship with ICS. I haven’t seen any other tablet that swayed me from the Transformer form factor, and the Transformer Prime looks like more of the same – only better. I might be tempted to hold out for the Padphone, since I love the concept, but it looks like it won’t happen until at least the first quarter of 2012, and that’s tentative. It isn’t enough to make me wait, so I’ll probably be picking up a Galaxy Nexus when it hits Verizon and then most likely a Transformer Prime.
Via Liliputing. Also here. And AllThingsD.
