> Neither was the iPhone or the iPad ("it's just a bigger iPhone")

The iPhone was a paradigm shift because it was SO MUCH BETTER. The iPad was a paradigm shift because it was a new form factor that people wanted. It solved the problem of reading on a small phone screen (especially before large screen phones were common) and the problem of lugging/holding a laptop for reading. It also got better battery life than most laptops and phones at the time.

In what way is this a better experience?

> How do you know for sure? This isn't a device that's targeted for HN users.

Who is the target, then?

> It does and you still haven't disputed my point: Not having to carry a 12in laptop in the subway.

How does this solve the problem of carrying a laptop? It is effectively a laptop, just a less useful/more limited one. Yeah, you can just not carry this, and I guess that "solves" the problem, but you can also just not carry your laptop and the problem is solved the same way.

> There are also plenty of people who are too poor to afford a laptop. They can afford this.

These hypothetical people can afford a high-powered phone and $100 for a glorified dock but can't afford $150 for a dedicated chromebook. You think this is really a large population of potential customers? You think a lot of people who cannot afford $150 are going to spend $100 on a clearly non-critical device?

> Also there are also a lot of people who can't afford cloud features and don't know how to sync a phone and laptop.

Your hypothetical customer base seems really farfetched. If you "can't afford cloud features", you probably can't afford a $100 dock. In reality, this customer base is largely using the free 15 gigs from Google. The people who can't afford to pay for more exist, but they're not likely to be buying this, and they're not likely to be using high-end phones with huge amounts of storage either, so the problem of syncing is a bit of a red herring anyway.

As for not knowing how to sync a laptop and phone, no one does that manually anymore. You use web-based products for most things and the stuff like photos gets gets synced automatically.

> No it doesn't for us, but it does for people who don't own a separate desktop or laptop. You have to look beyond yourself, your own social circle, and the suburbs that you live in.

Are poor people supposed to be too dumb to realize that they would be better off buying a chromebook for only a little more? Your children can use your chromebook for homework while you check the news on your phone or take it with you to the store. You can leave your chromebook for your spouse when you go to work. You can still use your chomebook when your phone battery is dead. This is not a replacement for a laptop. It's a phone accessory. The kickstarter page says so clearly.

Do you imagine that there is an army of poor people holding exactly $100 and desperate to spend it on luxury technology and not, say, basic necessities?

> That's funny. Everyone, including myself, made fun of Samsung for doing the same thing with the Note. Phablets have been selling just fine for years now. Again just because it's not useful for you personally, it doesn't mean that there isn't a market or need for it. The only thing that the Asus Padphone proves is that ideas are cheap. Execution is where it counts.

Maybe type "asus padphone" (or "asus padfone" since I guess I spelled it wrong) into a search engine to see what I'm talking about before responding dismissively? The padfone wasn't a "phablet". It was a phone that could mount in a tablet dock to become a tablet. It was a niche item that didn't catch on despite multiple iterations because a tablet that's useless without a phone and costs almost as much as a standalone tablet has a pretty small market of mostly gadget geeks.