First Impressions: Asus Fonepad 7 Dual Sim - Times of India ~ Electronic Gadgets

Asus has launched the dual-sim version of its Fonepad 7 tablet in the Indian market at a price of Rs 12,999. It essentially offers the same features as its single-sim iteration, barring the additional dual-sim functionality. The tablet will compete with its single-sim version as well as Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Neo.

Having used the device for a little while, here are our first impressions of Asus FonePad 7 Dual Sim:

In terms of design and build, the tablet is not very different from the earlier versions of the Asus Fonepad. It is essentially made of plastic and follows a conservative, utilitarian design philosophy.

The front of the Fonepad 7 is dominated by a 7-inch IPS display with 1280x800p resolution. While the 720p display is not bad, we feel that the screen is not too bright at 100nits; this also reduces the sunlight legibility of the tablet. However, viewing angles were good, and images and text appear crisp and sharp.

The display is surrounded by a wide, black bezel sporting glossy finish. A chrome earpiece and the 1.2MP front camera are placed above the display, while the Asus branding is located below it. The slightly curved back panel sports a matte grey finish and looks good.

The 5MP camera lens is located right at the middle, along with the si lver coloured Asus logo at the back. Also located at the back are the Power and Volume Rocker keys, which are positioned on the left and sport matte finish; the keys offer good tactile feedback.

The right side houses a flap that hides the two micro-sim card slots and a microSD card slot. The plastic flap appears to be a little flimsy but does the job well and is not as fragile as it looks.

The speaker grill is located at the back of the tablet, towards the bottom. This leads to sound getting muffled when the tablet lies on its back, which is a problem area. We wish Asus had placed the speaker at the front, as is case with the single-sim Fonepad 7.

Asus Fonepad 7 Dual Sim runs Android 4.3 with a custom user interface running on top. Asus has skinned UI elements like the notification tray and has added another button with the three Android on-screen navigation keys for launching widget-like utility apps. The widget-like mini apps take advantage o f the big display and can run on top of other apps. Asus offers a number of pre-loaded apps with the tablet including an app to calibrate the display and tinker settings like temperature, saturation and hue, and App Lock utility to password protect apps and the Asus WebStorage app. Asus offers 16GB cloud storage space with the tablet.

In our brief use, we did not encounter any lag or stutter while navigating through the tablet's interface or while launching apps. We made a few calls and found the voice quality and signal reception to be good.

We'll have a detailed review of the tablet, shortly.

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