SINGAPORE — In the battle for screen real estate among smartphones, the Asus PadFone offers an alternative and original take. It plugs into a 10.1-inch tablet for a full tablet experience.

On its own, the tablet shell does nothing and it needs the processing power and memory from the phone to work. And for it to work well, the phone has to be a powerful piece of technology — fortunately, it is.

The PadFone 2 phone is a 4.7-inch device which runs on Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich operating system. Powered by Qualcomm’s latest 1.5GHz quad-core processor, I experienced almost no lag when running apps in its smartphone and tablet forms.

It also has a 13-megapixel camera, which comes with a burst shot function that can capture up to 100 shots at six shots per second. I managed to take some great pictures with it in the day but was disappointed with the ones taken in low-light. Sliding the phone into the PadFone station also allows users to edit their pictures before sharing them on social media.

At 10.4mm thick and weighing 514g, the tablet is much slimmer and lighter than the original PadFone tablet, which was 13.55mm thick and weighed 724g.

The tablet is self-powered and doubles as a portable charger for the smartphone’s 2140mAh battery — which managed to last for at least 12 hours — so you never need to worry about your phone running dry while on the go. It fully recharges the phone so you get a full other 12 hours out of it.

All this extra juice would be useful when you are hungry for entertainment. Unfortunately, the tablet’s poor speaker quality mars the experience. With its only speaker at the back, sound is thin and diluted. To fully enjoy the clear audio with Asus’ SonicMaster technology, I recommend you get a pair of good earphones.

The Asus PadFone 2 delivers a hardware combination better than the original PadFone. If you want a unique, stylish and high-end device — or do not want to splurge on a smartphone and a tablet — it may be a tempting option.

Hiranand Sunny

The Asus PadFone 2 is currently available exclusively at StarHub, and the 32GB and 64GB models with the PadFone 2 Station dock (without plan) are priced at S$1,099 and S$1,239 respectively.