The biggest phablet: 7 inch Asus Fonepad reviewed

Turn it on and you’ll find something you might not expect: the smartphone version of Google Android, with the menu dock at the bottom, drop down bar at the top, and none of the interface from Android made for tablets.

That’s quite an intelligent decision, as that means this device can be used for phone calls, messaging, and will support practically every Android app normally design for phones, running them on a much bigger screen than most smartphones can muster.

Over in the performance section, the Fonepad is one unusual piece of kit.

While synthetic benchmarks don’t rate this device highly, the Intel Atom inside keeps it running quite well.

The lack of scoring in the benchmarks probably comes down to the benchtesting software being developed for chips that weren’t designed like the Atom, and thus it’s seeing something different.

Sufficed to say, this chip has no problems running most of what we threw at it, including several multi-tasking tests.

Every so often, we would encounter a slow down when switching between apps, but these weren’t often at all, and most pieces of software ran the same way they would on other devices.

Battery performance was equally impressive, with two days of life easily possible in the Asus Fonepad, and we suspect you could push it to three if you really needed to.

That’s not bad for a device that can do both the job of a phone and a tablet, though given its massive size, you’re less likely to carry it around as your full time phone.

And that’s one of the negative points: it’s just too big.

As a tablet, 7 inches is entirely logical. You hold it in your hand, you surf the internet with it, read books and magazines, watch movies, and do the regular tablet schlock you’ve always wanted to use a portable device for.

But hold it up to your hear and aside for having a poor grip, you will look like an idiot.

There were times when we held this to our ear where we hoped that no one would notice. Much to our surprise, no one batted an eyelid, and the only few who made fun of us were those who knew us already.

We felt silly, though, because holding a seven inch phone to your head makes you feel more self-aware, although we probably live in a time where big phones aren’t that big of a deal, no pun intended.

Keeping it in your pocket is a different kind of silly altogether, and depending on the size and length of your pockets from a design point of view, sitting and walking can be very difficult.

Over the course of our review, we became accustomed to keeping our phone in our luggage, a messenger bag we carry around from place to place. Walking without a phone in your pocket when you’re used to it brings a different level of being uncomfortable, and often made us feel less secure.

That’s a problem with us, but filling the void of an empty pocket with a big phone just didn’t work for us, though we met at least one person who had no concerns about keeping such a big phone in their pocket. Each to their own, we guess.