[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] Diamondback:
Okay guys, here we go with some impressions of a non american prime.

Today, I got my 32GB gray Prime + the gray dock from the first german batch.

I have to say that I never owned a tablet myself before and I currently use a Desire HD as my development phone.

Hardware:

Good:

Build quality is perfect, period. On my Prime there is absolutely nothing i don't like about it.

It's super thin and not too heavy

Power and volume buttons are nice, but not metal

Keyboard dock build quality is on the same superior level.

The screen is absolutely awesome, super bright, perferct viewing angels and the colors are super good too, no yellow hue for me.

The speaker(s) are hands down the best thing I've ever heard on any mobile device. They are loud, they are clear and they have bass :). I tried to completely cover it -->not possible with my hand, it still sounds the same

No comment on batterylife yet, it's my first charge

Camera is really good for a tablet, the pictures look much like iPhone pictures look. Really good when zoomed out and pretty strange when zoomed in.

The screen is

very

easy to clean, no comparision to my phone.

Bad:

Wifi is pretty weak, I can clearly see that it is way weaker than my DHD (it actually doesn't even see my network where my phone connects without any issue)

I won't say anything concerning the actual speed because I am not used to Wifi devices having a better speed than 10Mbps.... One word though: it's slower than my phone.

After the .33 update Wifi speeds are really good, 25-30Mbit/s

It's pretty sad we got only one speaker, you clearly notice the sound comes only from one side

The charging cable somehow feels really cheap. It also doesn't have any kind of snapping thing which prevents unwanted removal of the plug. The connector is like a USB-plug, you plug it and you un-plug it without any button or so to press. The charger itself feels okay.

Keys on the dock could need a bit more travel distance

Screen is finger print magnet, but I actually havenÄt compared this to other tablets

Software

Good:

Hmm, yea what to write here...?

HC runs smoother on the Prime than on my girlfriends Xoom...

Asus Supernote is a pretty decent note taking app. If they add palm rejection it's the best note app out there.

Haven't tested much of the other Asus apps so far

Ah, the Asus quicksettingsmenu is cool too, it's fast and just works

Bad:

HC just sucks, it's not well optimized at all. There are bugs random slowdowns and hangs everywhere :D

My GPS is broken too (more on this later)

Touchscreen sucks (I put this to software because I don't think it's hardware related). The touchscreen isn't always working properly. It's the same "ghost touching" reported earlier. Also it sometimes just doesn't register at all. You need to tap 2 or even more times.

Touchscreen working perfectly after the .33 update, no more issues at all. :)

Usage

I love the keyboard, i actually work a lot with that tiny mousepad :D I never saw me working with a mouse on android :)

Battery (still first charge of Prime and dock) seems to be pretty good, I am currently on 11 hours of constant usage (webrowsing, a movie, listening to music playing games, etc)

using the touchscreen while docked is a bit hard because the device is very top heavy, you need to hold the dock while working with your finger on the screen

You need to activate the ASUS onscreen keyboard in order to get a QWERTZ keyboard while using the dock. Otherwise it's a QWERTY. That's the most annoying thing I found so far :D

The "GPS-issue":

Now I had the chance to actually test it myself, so here are the results.

My Prime doesn't lock onto satellites as most others here too.

It barely sees any satellites at all. Where my phone sees 10 sats (all with good reception) the Prime sees

from time to time

exactly one with near zero reception...

I really think this is software related (or maybe I just

want

to believe that? :D). Read why:

In my opinion we have so many issues with the Primes because ASUS didn't intend to release the Prime with Honeycomb at all.

I think they developed this device only with ICS and once they realized that they can't finish ICS they hurried up to slap HC on it.

Unfortunately the actual

testing

of the software was more or less forgotten or better suspended due to time constraints.

If I am right we will see a nicely running more or less issue free ICS soon. If this is

not

the case ASUS really screwed up this time...

Conclusion

All in all I think the Prime is a awesome device which will get perfect once the bugs are gone. I am still happy with my Prime and I'll keep it.

If they fix the GPS and the touchscreen I got a perfect device for my use. Weak Wifi is not really a problem for me :)

Update

Okay a little update mainly about battery life:

I used the Prime all day now until it reached 2% I got about 9 hours of

constant heavy usage

, including webbrowsing, downloading lots of things, watching a movie, listening to music playing games, etc.

Then i plugged the fully charged dock and continued using the Prime the same way as before. Currently I am near 12 hours of usage, 23% left in the dock and Prime got recharged by dock to 31%.

I guess the Prime will go up to about 40-45% (all while using it), before the dock gets empty.

So far I am pretty impressed by the batterylife. (remember this is the first charge for both Prime and dock)

See also the added section about the usage.

Second Update

I just got the .33 OTA and it installed fine without any problems.

The touchscreen is super responsive now, no more issue at all in this case.

Wifi seems to be faster too, GPS hasn't changed at all (as expected)