Asus Transformer Prime arrives in Australia

Brenton Currie
Wednesday, 18 January 2012 18:16

Your IT - Mobility

The Asus Transformer Prime tablet is now available in Australia, one publication reports, confirming earlier speculation that the tablet would launch January 18.

ASUS' Transformer Prime to arrive in Australia "within the next few months" (Credit: ASUS)

According to Cnet Australia, the Transformer Prime is now available for purchase by Australian residents, nearly a month after the original Transformer tablet's successor launched in the United States.

Previously the company had said it would arrive 'soon'.

Late December, a rumour began circulating that the Prime wouldn't be sold without a keyboard - and according to Cnet, that's true. It'll come with the keyboard at least to begin with, and cost $799 for the 32GB model and $899 for the 64GB edition - a hefty price considering the cost of most other tablets on the market in Australia.

However at the time of writing, the company's corporate website had not been updated to reflect local availability or pricing, instead continuing to promote the product's features and highlights.

The Prime is a very high powered tablet running a NVIDIA Tegra 3 Quad-core CPU and also boasting an 8MP rear-facing camera, front-facing webcam and - the most unique element - a dockable keyboard that aims to emulate a laptop-like experience for users interacting with the Android OS.

In America, the Prime has experienced an issue with Wi-Fi and GPS not functioning correctly or accurately thanks to the design of the tablet - it's understood that this hasn't been fixed in Australia. Separately, the tablet will receive an update to the latest version of Android, dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich, very soon after shipping running Honeycomb.