ASUS is finally bringing back the keyboard dock to the PadFone series, or at least we have such device clearing the FCC, as spotted by the folks of Mobile Geeks (and brought to our attention by Engadget). Why the Taiwanese company decided to kill this product in the first place is beyond me. Alas, this isn’t the only problem ASUS is facing; they are notorious for announce some PadFone only to have it hit select markets full 6 months afterwards. At that point, what used to be the sexy device, isn’t as desirable as it was when it was originally announced.
Anyhow, we’re hoping that with the new keyboard dock things will change, and that soon enough we’ll see AT&T finally launching the PadFone X and offer it with this dock (for an extra cash).
One other thing you should know – this dock is different than the one offered with the original PadFone. “The ASUS Mobile Dock Keyboard” (PF-06 or “TransBoard”) doesn’t have a big battery that can add extra juice to the PadFone Station. Rather, it has a small 450mAh battery and connects to the smartphone/tablet via Bluetooth, making it that much lighter. At this point, we’ll take whatever we get.
Now Asus, if you could also adopt Ubuntu Mobile and cram it on some PadFone, we would love you even more. 😉