Early rumors said that Samsung might be building the Nexus Tablet, since it was the one that built the Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus. Then, we thought it might be LG or, because of the newfound relationship, it might be Motorola. The current rumors are pointing toward Asus as the current leading candidate.

The rest of the speculation still appears to be holding true with the upcoming Nexus tablet boasting a pure Ice Cream Sandwich experience with a 7-inch display and a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor. Considering that the 7-inch Asus MeMo tablet was brought down to $249, the $199 target price for the Nexus Tablet–which could be called the Google Play or maybe the Nexus Play–looks within reach. We’re expecting production to start next month with a launch to follow in June.

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Ice Cream Sandwich for the ASUS EEE Pad Transformer Prime Android tablet was planned to be available much later than it appears to be happening, as it has started to roll out for users just a couple of days ago.  ASUS, ever anxious to see their achievement properly appreciated at CES 2012, even decided to make an introductory video themselves.

Although the video shows some basic functionality that we have all seen about ICS before, it leaves a few things unknown:

• Where is facial recognition unlocking?
• Swipes and transitions didn’t look overly fluid. Was the video of ICS beta?
• When in the Browser, how does it scroll, especially when a web page is not fully loaded just yet? Reports are already coming in stating that rendering speed was improved for the browser. We’d be interested to see benchmarks on that.

With a price tag of $499, the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime might be looked upon as a direct competitor to the iPad 2.

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According to NotebookItalia, who got this leaked rendering, ASUS will officially announce a 7-inch version of its successful Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime. The rendering makes it look like it’s running Android Honeycomb, and at launch time it’s quite possible, as no recent ASUS Android devices were launched with Ice Cream Sandwich just yet. Apparently it will sport the same mighty Tegra 3 processor as its bigger brother. However, here’s where this rumor gets quite unclear: a 7-inch tablet from ASUS was demoed at CES 2011 where it was called ‘ASUS Eee Memo Pad’ and was said to be based on a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 1.2 GHz processor.  Some models of that Memo (or was it ‘MeMO’?) might even be set with glasses-free 3D screens, but it didn’t happen just yet.

Whatever the discrepancies between the two proposed pocketable  ASUS tablet prototypes, the same press photo leak source has its price point pinned at $299. Will it be based on Tegra 3, or Snapdragon S3, or even S4, will be established at CES 2012.

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Latest news has it that these nVidia Tegra 3 quad-core 32GB 10-inch tablets running customized Android 3.2 Honeycomb were sold out quickly. However, slates are about to reappear soon, or can be shipped to stores (at least in Silicon Valley where I checked) in 3-5 days from now. So anyone feeling holiday blues and 5 Franklins in his/her pocket thats left unspent, may try this toy instead. Droid-Life’s Kellex has put up an interesting video review of the slate, so much of the boring tech specs could be just omitted:

On top of what was being said in this review, it’s worth to mention that the responsiveness is not so stellar throughout the tablet’s UI. ASUS customizations of a clean Android 3.2 are suspected to be responsible for this, then the nVidia Tegra 3 code for drivers and such might be just quite immature for the first Tegra 3 based device.

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It has now been confirmed that the Eee Pad tablet range from Asus will indeed support Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. This is for the entire Asus Eee Pad “family,” which presumably includes the Transformer and the Slider, as well as any other Eee Pads they may have hiding up their sleeves.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that Asus isn’t quite as quick to point out any kind of timeline for the upgrade process, so you’ll have to be stuck with Android 3.2 Honeycomb in the meantime until they figure out how to get ICS to play friendly with the Eee Pads. It makes you wonder if the Eee Pad Transformer 2 will ship with ICS, but that’s probably just wishful thinking.

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Since the Asus Slider has an integrated keyboard, it won’t be as slim as the normal tablets: it measures 0.68” deep and it weights 2.12 pounds. The tablet is expected to come with Android 3.1. Honeycomb and hopefully, the Android 3.2 update would come sometime in the close future. The Eee Pad Slider sports a 5 megapixel back camera and a 1.2 megapixel front one, features USB port, mini HDMI support, headphone jack and micro SD memory card slot.

Its expected to reach many more countries and reseller channels next month, but until then you can order it from the Asus official website. They should be safe from Apple’s lawsuits even though it runs Android, it has a unique slider keyboard which to our knowledge Apple holds no patents to.

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Surprising no one with a technology pulse, tablets are big at this year’s CES. So with damn near everyone and their grandmother showing off what they’ve been working on over the last year, it’s advisable that your product better be among the sleekest if you want to get noticed.

ASUS appears to be starting off the jockeying pretty well with their four new products. The Eee Pad MeMO has a 7” capactive screen and will ship with the new Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). ASUS is a little shy on the power details beyond a note that it comes equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile processor, if it’s the most-recent, third generation that should ring in as a 1.2Ghz processor. Oh and it comes with a stylus pen if you’re into that.

The Eee Pad Transformer and Eee Pad Slider take an innovative approach to incorporating an optional full keyboard. Both have 10.1” IPS touchscreens, NVIDIA Tegra 2 mobile processors (1Ghz), and will likewise ship with Android 3.0. The way they’ve incorporated the keyboard is the stand-out of both these products. The Transformer keyboard is a docking option that also serves as a battery extension station, giving you a reported 16 hours of battery life. The Slider comes loaded with a sliding keyboard that is really slick. Check out both of these in action on ASUS’s promo video but try not be distracted by the pretty British lady with the giggly boobs.

Last but not least, the Eee Slate EP121. It’s loaded with a 12.1” multi-touch screen and an Intel Core i5 processor that packs 2.66 GHz of processing power. A break from the other Android-driven products, it ships with Microsoft’s Windows 7 Home Premium OS, . With the Windows OS, a boatload of power, a nice big screen and a 64GB SSD drive the Slate is definitely being targeted towards the enterprise crowd. ASUS also highlights that there’s a bunch of data input options like pens and Bluetooth keyboards too.

If you’re at CES you can see them all live and in action at the Aria Hotel Juniper 1 Ballroom.

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Their first offering is expected December 2010 or January 2011 and is a Windows 7 touchscreen tablet sporting a 12-inch LCD. CEO of Asustek Jerry Shen says it will cost around $1000 USD and have a docking station. Speaking at the companies second quarter earnings conference Friday. That’s quite a hefty price for a Windows tablet, but according to Shen justifies the price. Hardware is much more demanding and manufacturers tend to pack them with every single option known to man. They are basically laptops stripped of their QWERTY-ness. The Eee Pad EP121 will run Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium and tout a beefy Intel Core 2 Duo processor inside.

“If you want to compete with the iPad, you have to do more than just be less expensive,” Shen said. “You have to offer more features. We want to spend more time perfecting the [Eee Pad] before we launch. We’re looking more at Q1 to launch the devices.”

A second Windows tablet is slated for around the same time, but with Microsoft’s Windows Embedded Compact 7 software and will cost you between $399 and $499 USD.

Asus does make the Garmin-Asus Android GPS smartphone as well, which as of late has been accepted to be unsuccessful by Garmin. While Asus having Android experience on their belt, and a good core team of Android engineers now moving to the tablet division things could look really good by the time an Android Eee Pad tablet is read for the world. Shen says you can expect to pay less than $399 USD for the Android tablet, does that mean $398? Anyhow, it will be slated for a later release in March 2011.

Photo: flickr/kamikura

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