Asus' Eee Pad Transformer Prime goes up on pre-order

If youre eager to get your hands on Asus new Tegra 3 powered Eee Pad Transformer Prime tablet and live somewhere in North America, then we have good news for you, its now available for pre-order. Asus hasnt confirmed an actual launch date as yet, but wed expect the Transformer Prime to arrive in time for the holidays.

The Transformer Prime will be available in one of two colours that Asus calls amethyst grey and champagne gold, although the grey one still looks purple to us in the pictures. You also have the choice of 32 or 64GB of internal eMMC flash memory. Whichever model you pick youll get a Tegra 3 SoC which Asus has as yet to reveal the clock speed for, 1GB of DDR2 memory, a 10.1-inch IPS+ screen with 1280x800 resolution, a battery good for up to 12h of usage and theres of course the optional keyboard dock which adds another 6h of battery life.

Price wise youre looking at US$499.99 for the 32GB models and US$599.99 for the 64GB models, slightly more than the original Eee Pad Transformer, but not a massive price hike. No word on pricing for the keyboard dock as yet. Asus US has put up a special tablet site which contains links to the pre-order partners which youll find at the bottom of this article.

As far as the OS is concerned, the Transformer Prime will ship with Android 3.2, but Asus is already promising that itll be upgradeable to 4.0. In fact, Nvidia has already posted a video on YouTube showing off an early build of Android 4.0 running on the Transformer Prim as a demo showing off its Tegra 3 chip. This suggests that the wait for the upgrade shouldnt be too long, which is good news for those that are planning on getting a Transformer Prime.

Source: Asustablets