Software
The fact that ASUS continues to use
near-vanilla Android is by no means an indication that the company's been
cutting corners. In fact, it's quite the opposite. First of all, there is
typical Asus Quick Settings feature a row of customizable quick toggles (for
auto-rotate screen, WiFi, WiFi hotspot, Bluetooth and so on) and a screen
brightness slider to the pull-down notification tray, and this is consistent
throughout both the phone mode and tablet mode. Given that you can disable the
Asus Quick Settings, we’re sure that you will be able to switch to Android's
native quick settings tray when the eventual 4.2 update comes along. However,
we were quite satisfied with the Asus's performance.
The
tablet mode
Asus also made some minor changes in other
areas. First, the "Pad only" tab in the application tray of tablet
mode is still there, in which users can filter pad-only applications for quick
access. There is also one small drop-down menu in the application tray to sort
apps by name, frequency, or download time. Not sure what made it take so much
time (or why vanilla Android never had this in the first place), but we are
glad that it has been here.
One other stealthy change lies in the home
button: when you long press it, instead of just presenting Google Now button,
the Infinity gives you two rows of shortcuts. The outer arc hosts up to eight
customizable app shortcuts, meaning that you can jump to any application from anywhere,
at any time. Meanwhile, the inner arc gives you buttons for Asus Echo (for
voice command), Google Now, device lock, app tray and settings (for selecting
the outer arc's shortcuts). We have mixed feeling about this one, as we've
gotten used to flicking our finger from the home button to the lone Google Now
shortcut on many other phones, so it's better to have a way to disable this
feature. Maybe it comes in handy once you get used to it.
You
need to say specific commands or phrases for ASUS Echo to carry out the tasks.
Moving to a higher level in the UI, Asus
has decided to take on the ability to change the home screen scenarios. Yes,
it's basically like "Scenes" in the older versions of HTC's Sense UI,
but HTC has ditched it in Sense 5, with the reason being not many people
actually use it. Perhaps ASUS' more intuitive implementation will popularize
this feature once again: you toggle the scenario-selection mode by pinching the
home screen. Then you can edit the home screen or switch to another scenario
from there. Right from the beginning, the Infinity has set up a
"Work" scenario which is filled with utilities that increase
performance, as well as an "Entertainment" scenario featuring
shortcuts for multimedia applications and some of Asus's social networking
applications. Of course you can create your own scenario from scratch as well.
Notice
how the apps and widgets are arranged in the two different scenarios.
The killer feature of the PadFone series is
obviously Dynamic Display, one interesting name given to the way the current
app is kept alive when switching between phone mode and tablet mode. The good
news is that not only did ASUS keep the switch time below two seconds, but the
list of compatible apps out of the box has grown tremendously, including many
of the 23 Asus applications that we will talk about in a few moments. As
before, the basic applications such as Calendar, Camera, Contacts, Gallery and
Messaging can smoothly switch between two interface modes. In other words, you
can show off how a video clip keeps playing in the bigger screen once you've
docked the phone, or how the calendar switches from phone mode to tablet mode,
as opposed to just scaling up to fit the larger screen.
Annoyingly, flagship Google apps like
Gmail, Google+, Maps, Hangouts and YouTube are grayed out on the Dynamic
Display list, because they arre still not compatible with one of the main
features on the Padfone series. Those that do work well include Chrome, Drive,
Play Music, Play Store, Search and Translate, but they require manual enabling
in settings for some reason. As for the non-bundled or non-Google apps, your
mileage may vary: we do not have any problems with Engadget app, as well as
Dropbox, Facebook, Foursquare, IMDb, MX Player or SoundHound. However, we
noticed glitches in the Amazon Kindle, Evernote, Firefox and Twitter - usually
in the form of weird font sizes or displaced UI components.
Now, go back to the Asus applications. If
you've played with Asus's previous Android devices then you are already familiar
with most of them. These include Asus Studio for viewing images (by location,
face or tags); My Library for e-book; AudioWizard for boosting the loudspeakers
or headphones (the latter part is new, but not as well-tuned, suffering from
volume fluctuation); MyBitCast (notes application that supports audio
recording); SuperNote; Watch Calendar (calendar displayed in the style of a
clock) and WebStorage. The old Instant Dictionary utility is also present here
and can be switched on / off via quick settings in notification tray.
About the new bundled applications, the
notable ones include ASUS' Splendid onscreen color tool, as seen on the Asus
computers, as well as Echo Asus, Asus Story, Birthday Reminder and Asus To-Do.
We especially like the Asus Story, which allows you to create photo stories in
neat collages - great for presenting family photos or just for killing time. On
the other hand, the Asus Echo failed to impress. While the company made a big
deal out of this voice-command app at MWC, it sometimes wouldn't even respond
to the scripted commands for making phone calls. Even if it worked, we were
hoping to experience a natural conversation that we are familiar with Apple's
Siri, but Echo does not come close to that level of sophistication.
ASUS
Splendid follows the same branding and features on its desktops and notebook
LCDs.
Asus has also packed some applications
related to social networks: BuddyBuzz and PinPal. The former aggregates news
from your various networks - Facebook, Plurk, Renren (China's version of
Facebook), Twitter, and Sina Weibo - and presents the feed in a magazine-like
interface. On the other hand, PinPal focuses on your selected friends' Facebook
and Twitter feeds, and it displays their post in a bland, but cleaner style.
While we prefer BuddyBuz to PinPal, both applications have been crashed
multiple times, with the former also suffering from poor photo rendering as
well as struggling to grab images from Weibo, while the latter can get a bit
laggy when it manages to stay running. Until Asus sorts these applications out,
we recommend staying away to minimize your agony.
On a brighter note, some of these ASUS apps
also come in the form of floating widgets in tablet mode - pretty much like the
ones you get on Samsung tablets. To toggle them, just tap the arrow at the
bottom left corner of the screen, then you will be presented 10 resizable
floating widgets: AudioWizard, Browser, BuddyBuzz, Calculator, Calendar, Video
Player, Countdown, Stopwatch, Dictionary and Email. If that's not enough, you
can also add some of the normal widgets to the list, but you cannot resize
them. Our only issue with the default floating widgets is that they respond
slowly when we resize them, but chances are this is something that ASUS can
also fix via an update.
