Android Phone Review: Asus Fonepad 16gb

For those of you not familiar with the latest breed of Phablet I shall first give a small introduction. Take a 7 inch tablet, add a sim card slot, microphone and speaker and there you go, a 7 inch tablet which is also a phone, simple!

As soon as I saw the fonepad a few months ago I knew I wanted one, I had a Asus tf101 at the time, and I was getting a bit bored with it after a year and a half, which was the same situation with my phone which at the time was the Huawei G300, Both needed replacing and after giving it some thought (and 3 weeks with a Huawei G510....) I went for the 7 inch Asus.

First impressions were as expected, amazing. The stock jelly bean 4.1.2 is clean and free of bloatware and despite the single core Intel chip clocked at 1.2ghz and the 1GB of ram it handles itself well. There is a bit of lag from time to time but nothing more than a second glance between screens on occasion. Considering I have not rooted or played with clock speeds its more than up to the job for general use. Games like pumped BMX and candy crush will run fine with no lag at all but games like Real Racing 3 will lag but so far it has not stopped me from playing.

The battery life has been a rather pleasant surprise it does boast a 4200mAh battery but with medium use I can easily get 2 days from a single charge but again the bigger games do tend to eat a large chunk quickly but since turning off google now that is less of an issue.

The front facing camera is decent quality for such a low MP but the lack of rear facing camera and LED flash do limit the fonepad's appeal as an all in one device and will mean that you end up with a bit of arm or face of the picture you are trying to take or, no picture at all.

Sound quality is very good while taking a call and there is no need to shout to the microphone despite the size. While listening to music or watching a movie the external speaker does sound a bit tinny but the Asus Audio manager can be used to sort that as best as possible however, as with all my android devices Poweramp sorts the music out and there is no substitute for a good set of cans.As a tablet it does everything expected of it, as a phone it does everything expected of it, however you need to make sure you have big pockets and a rather large amount of self confidence. Think Dom Jolly, Trigger happy TV? Yep that's what you look like as you take a call. You could have a wired or wireless headset but if your buying one of these your probably not too bothered about what people think you look like.

However there is another side to all this. While I love this device, even tho it has bruised my knee after a stroll through Coventry in a pocket, this is my 3rd fonepad in a month. The issue was the external SD card was unmounted suddenly and on several occasions wiped. After trying various SD cards the Carphone warehouse in Taunton were top notch with the customer service however and sorted replacements without hastle. So far fonepad number 3 has been fine and dandy!Overall this Phablet is a great piece of kit for the 179.99 asking price and can handle nearly everything you can throw at it, sure it wont multi task as well as a Nexus 7 but the Nexus 7 is a tad more money and is just a tablet so you still need to carry a phone as well if you want to go mobile on the net. With Huawei launching a 7 inch phablet soon and Samsung already having a range of larger phones it is clear to see the phablet is here to stay. The word on the net is that the new Nexus 7 will have a sim slot and to be honest if it does not then Google have missed a trick. However if the rumours are not true then buying a nexus 7  mk2 will still leave you wanting more.As always please +1, like or tweet and leave us a comment or two!