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Asus FonePad is a tiny tablet, supersize smartphone (pictures)

We get our paws on the tablet Asus wants you to use as a smartphone.

Eric Franklin
Eric Franklin led the CNET Tech team as Editorial Director. A 20-plus-year industry veteran, Eric began his tech journey testing computers in the CNET Labs. When not at work he can usually be found at the gym, chauffeuring his kids around town, or absorbing every motivational book he can get his hands on.
Eric Franklin
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1 of 8 Sarah Tew/CNET
BARCELONA, Spain--Meet the 7-inch FonePad. It's from the company that built the Nexus 7, and in design terms, it's very similar.
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2 of 8 Sarah Tew/CNET
The sides are looking minimal, but the tablet has a classy design, especially considering it only costs £179, or $249. There's no word yet on a U.S. release, though.
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3 of 8 Sarah Tew/CNET
The tablet is slim enough, and feels light. It's portable, but would you really want to use it as a phone?
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4 of 8 Sarah Tew/CNET
The back has a metallic coating that feels rather luxurious. There's no rear-facing camera, though.
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5 of 8 Sarah Tew/CNET
Asus is promising a microSD card slot, to bump up the 16GB of built-in storage.
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6 of 8 Sarah Tew/CNET
This device will be familiar to anyone who's used Android before. Using it as a phone, however, will take a little courage.
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7 of 8 Sarah Tew/CNET
It's running Android 4.1, which sadly isn't the latest version. If you want cutting-edge Android, you'll be better off with a Nexus device.
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8 of 8 Sarah Tew/CNET
An Intel Atom processor resides inside. Will it top the quad-core Tegra 3 chip in the Nexus 7? Only time -- and our benchmark tests -- will tell.

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