With the launch of Dark Meadow: the Pact on Android this morning, the teams at NVIDIA and Phosphor Games decided that to celebrate, they would like to hand out a 32GB Asus Transformer Prime, matching keyboard dock, and $25 giftcard to one lucky DL reader. We just posted our review of the game, which I highly recommend that you read.

Powered by the Unreal Engine and built specifically for the Tegra 3 4-PLUS-1 chipset, Dark Meadow is a pleasure to look at and play. The high polygon count and added textures and effects really come to life if using the right device – such as a Transformer Prime. When you think of the game type, we tend to compare it to older classics like Myst that involve strategy and adventure through the eyes of the main character. This takes a step up in the awesome meter though, thanks to all of the demon slaughtering that occurs along the way. This is easily one of the more beautiful games you will find on any mobile platform. 

Transformer Prime owners who have registered with Asus to receive a free GPS dongle are beginning to see the packages arrive at their doorsteps today. The dongle itself has been reported to fix the GPS locating issues that have plagued the Prime tablet, but some would say that the added accessory is quite the eye sore.

Prime owners, have you received your dongle yet?

Cheers Jared!

According to PC World, Asus has announced the official launch date and pricing for the upcoming Transformer Pad 300. Starting April 22 in the US, folks can pick up the quad-core Tegra 3, 10.1″ beast for $399 for the 32GB model with a 1GB of RAM. According to reports, the tablet shall be marketed as a laptop replacement and will feature 3G and 4G LTE capability. (Um, yes please?)

The slate will come with Ice Cream Sandwich out of the factory and offer up to 10 hours of battery life, with an additional 5 hours with the attached lapdock accessory. With the new information stating that this tablet has 4G LTE connectivity, the last question we all want to know, is whose 4G LTE? Verizon? AT&T? April 22 is merely days away, so we shall be impatiently waiting for an announcement from Asus. 

The Asus Transformer Prime, by all accounts, is still the best Android tablet on the market (our review). It boasts a quad-core processor, amazing screen, great build materials, the top tablet camera around, and docking abilities that would make any tech device jealous. Unfortunately for some that wish to use it as a massive navigation system, Asus chose to spend as little time as possible making the GPS work correctly. After multiple attempts to fix it via software update, they decided that the only way to make it truly functional was through the addition of a GPS dongle.

With an acknowledgement of said dongle by Asus, we have been sitting here waiting for news of a release. Well, this morning, invites to request a dongle were sent out to Prime owners in an offer that expires on July 31st. Along with those invites, a set of leaked pictures made their way onto the web, giving us an idea as to how hideous your Prime will be with this thing attached. Yep, I said hideous. 

The GPS feature, or should I say lack thereof, for the Transformer Prime is finally going to be put to rest by Asus. After a few OTA update attempts to tweak the tabs software to communicate better with satellites, Asus is resorting to shipping out dongles for every registered Prime owner. Sounds awesome, right?

We will be releasing a dongle shortly that will address the GPS function and be a fully usable GPS that will lock onto many satellites and keep their lock with wi-fi active.

GPS dongle will be provided for free when it arrives. ETA is mid April for this and we are setting up a process for it. We will inform you once the process is complete and the dongles here.
It will look similar to the hinge from the dock. Where it will be a flush fit on the bottom of the unit if held in landscape matching the color of your Prime chassis.

The dongle will be a “flush fit” on the bottom of the device when in landscape mode, but there is no telling if you are still able to hook up the laptop dock while using the new hardware. According to the above email, it looks like we can expect the dongle this month. Big props to Asus for manning up and finally taking care of this issue.

Via: Engadget

The update to the Transformer Prime that was talked about yesterday is officially rolling out to the device. According to previous reports, build 9.4.2.21 was intended to be a pretty awesome update and would include face unlock, lockscreen notification controls, and Asus Vibe would get a bump up to version 2.0. Everything seems good, except that face unlock is still not there. Might be a problem for some, but I doubt there are too many people who can’t live without the face unlock feature.

Go pick up the update and let us know if you see anything else worth noting that wasn’t already listed in yesterday’s breakdown.

Cheers Brian and everyone else!

Seriously, this is our Transformer Prime review. As you know,we first got our hands on this next-gen Android tablet back in December, but for reasons we can’t explain (other than Kellex being bored to death with Android tablets), we are just now putting it all together. Apologies are in store though, we really have no excuse for this being 5 months late. With that said, you should already know that it is one of our favorite tablets as we talk about it probably more than any other Android tablet that is available. It’s a beast of a slate, so let’s get started. 

The “awesome” behind the future Transformer Prime update that Asus teased on Facebook yesterday has apparently been outed by Asus Italy. Via their Facebook page, we have the full breakdown, which includes Face Unlock, notification controls from the lockscreen, a new mechanism to allow for easier camera updates, and more. It sounds like a hefty update, but I don’t know how “awesome” that is. Depends on your needs, I guess.