It appears that ASUS is not quite ready to give up on dual-OS powered devices. ASUS unveiled the Transformer Book Duet, a convertible laptop-tablet hybrid powered by both Android and Windows, at CES 2014. The move appeared to please neither Google nor Microsoft and was first postponed and eventually cancelled due to pressure from both Google and Microsoft who did not want to see their operating systems sharing a device with a competitor. But ASUS is trying once more and unveiled the ASUS Transformer Book V at Computex 2014.
Billed as “the world’s first five-mode, three-in-one converged laptop,” the Transformer Book V offers five different configurations: It can operate as either an Android or Windows laptop, an Android or Windows tablet or an Android smartphone.
At its simplest the Transformer Book V is a 5-inch smartphone powered by a quad-core Intel Atom processor and Google Android 4.4 KitKat. It also packs LTE connectivity and a 2,500mAh battery.
The smartphone can also plug into a tablet base like the PadFone which has a 12.5-inch HD IPS display. Without a smartphone, the tablet runs on Windows 8.1. But when the smartphone is plugged in, the tablet can quickly switch to Android via a dedicated button. This configuration offers up to 128GB of internal storage.
A keyboard dock can also be attached to the tablet to turn it into a full-fledged notebook able to run both Android and Windows. The tablet/notebook configurations are powered by an Intel Core processor and the keyboard dock bumps storage up to 1TB.
ASUS did not announce availability and pricing details. It’s unlikely that Google and Microsoft will have warmed up to the concept of dual-OS devices so it remains to be seen if we will ever see the Transformer Book V hit store shelves.
Source : ASUS