The ASUS PadFone consists of 3 main components – the PadFone (phone), The PadFone Station (tablet) and the PadFone Station Dock (Keyboard) which all 3 come in matching dark brown colour that’s similar to the original ASUS Eee Pad Transformer. The brains and operation source comes from the PadFone (phone) itself and the Station (tablet) is a dummy tablet display device which comes with its own battery. So if you’re wondering can you use both separately, the answer is no and you would need the phone in order to use the tablet.
Let’s start with the phone. The Padfone is a 4.3” smart phone which comes with Super AMOLED display that pushes qHD resolution of 960×540 pixels. Internally, it is powered with a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm S4 processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage which is expandable with micro SD. While most phones today are using micro SIM, the Padfone still uses the standard mini SIM card. Juicing up the phone is a 1,520mAh battery which we expected much more for a phone at this level of hardware and price point.

Externally, the Padfone sleek looking device featuring an all-black front with familiar looking rounded corners. From a distance, the top looks somewhat similar as an iPhone 4/4S but the earpiece with a thin chrome grill sets it apart. You’ll get a front facing VGA camera next to the earpiece. Over at the bottom, there’s a subtle ASUS branding and there’s no physical android navigation buttons present. Just like the Galaxy Nexus, ASUS opt for on-screen buttons instead. Only gripe which we had is the lacking of notification light, a feature that most people would definitely prefer.

The Padfone feels a well built device with metal-like frame surrounding the sides and it comes with a nice back cover. Although the back is made of plastic, it feels up market thanks to its circular patterns like the one found on the Transformer Prime. If you hold it without looking, it does feel as if the phone gets thinner from the top towards the bottom. This is due to the flaking sides which slope downwards, giving the illusion of a thinner device when the device is evenly thick from top to bottom. The phone weighs about 129grams and has a thickness of 9.2mm.

On the right you’ll get a separate +/- volume buttons and over the top there’s a 3.5mm audio jack placed right smack in the middle with the power/wake button placed on the right. Over on the left, you get exposed ports for micro USB and micro HDMI with 3 exposed pins that are used during docking onto the tablet.

Let’s move on to the PadFone Station which is the tablet hardware. The front facade looks very much identical to the Eee Pad Transformer except for the black frame that surrounds the glass. However holding it, it is noticeably thicker due to the PadFone holder at the back.

In order for the PadFone to work in tablet mode, the phone goes into a dedicated compartment like one would load an old school cassette tape. Pushing the slider lock pops out the padfone bay and the padfone slots right into a slot where the micro USB, micro HDMI and the 3 pins connect. To remove, just open the door at 90 degree angle, and it will pops out the phone from the connector.

The optional keyboard dock which was provided is identical to the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer with a matching matte plastic finish at the back. In case you’re wondering, the original Transformer does fit into the keyboard dock for the PadFone. No surprises that the PadFone station and Keyboard dock design is inherited from the original transformer considering it took ASUS some time to release the PadFone commercially.