That’s exactly what Laptop Mag wanted to find out, so they pit the new iPad against the Tegra 3-powered Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime. First, they ran GLBenchmark 2.1. This revealed that the A5X on the iPad 3 was able to render twice as many frames per second on the Egypt test and it was able to handle more than four times as many texels (texture pixels). So, for pure graphical prowess, the A5X seems like the winner.

However, when they had a look at integer and floating point performance, the Tegra 3 blew the A5X out of the water. It also outclassed Apple’s chip for memory performance, with the exception of memory bandwidth.

But what about the real world? They played Shadowgun and Riptide GP on both tablets and, well, it’s a mixed bag. The Retina display on the iPad provided crisper text and better colors, but the Asus had some visual effects not present in the Apple-friendly version of the games. Check out the video below.

[Source]

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The fine folks at XDA-Developers report that ASUS has chosen to lock a bootloader on its flagship tablet, the Eee Pad Transformer Prime. This is extremely sad news for all the tinkerers who were hoping to get Ice Cream Sandwich on this powerful tablet currently running a lightly customized stock ASUS Android 3.2 (Honeycomb). First reports of this discovery looks like this:

Asus has Encrypted the bootloader on the prime with a 128 bit Encryption (basically impossible to crack!) like HTC did awhile back…. This makes it impossible to flash ROMs and kernels which can really unlock the devices full potential, that is overclocking, flashing Linux distros, customizing, undervolting, denying installation of Windows 8, etc. The sky is the limit but it depends on YOU!

After weeks of demanding they allowed us to do what we want with the devices we purchased from HTC, and HTC finally caved and unlocked it!

Protests to this ASUS decision multiply in social networks, at the ASUS official Facebook and Twitter pages, even all around the globe. It’s worth to mention that the original ASUS Eee Pad Transformer (not Prime) was launched with a locked bootloader, too, but XDA member named 9600pro87 found a secure key to unlock the bootloader for this previous ASUS Transformer tablet. Now, there’s no obstacles in developing alternative firmwares for it.

All in all, purchases of Transformer Primes may dwindle if the decision to unlock its bootloader, or a leak of the key won’t be made  soon enough. A good example of such a reaction is the Nook Tablet with its bootloader also locked: if it could be launched and unlocked it might fare a better situation than its direct competition, the Kindle Fire.

The post ASUS Transformer Prime: Locked Bootloader Causes Uproar appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The NVIDIA Tegra3 processor is easily one of the biggest stars of this upcoming Honeycomb tablet, but Asus is throwing in a few extra goodies to make sure you want it too. For starters, they’ve reworked the design so that it has more of a metallic finish, not unlike the gorgeous Asus Zenbook UX21. They’ve also slimmed down the package to just 8.3mm and 586 grams; compare that to the the 12.9mm and 690 grams of the original.

The rest of the specs are right in line with our previous expectations, including the 10.1-inch IPS display, 12-core GeForce GPU, memory expansion, 8MP rear camera, 1.2MP front camera, GPS, WiFi, USB 2.0, microHDMI, and 12 hours of battery life. Curiously, they’re only putting a single gig of RAM in there. I hope that’s enough to give us the true Kal-El experience.

The 32GB and 64GB models should both become available next month for $499 and $599, respectively. It looks like they’ve killed off the 16GB option, but pricing has remained steady for the upper two capacities. The keyboard dock is $149.

The post Official: Kal-El Lives With Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime appeared first on Mobile Magazine.