Asus announces PadFone 2 will be released in December, but Australian consumers will miss out

Asus has announced it will release its second-generation PadFone 2 hybrid smartphone/tablet/netbook device for the major European and Asian markets in December, but no Australian release date has yet been announced.

As with its predecessor, the PadFone is an Android smartphone that can be docked inside a 10.1 inch tablet screen known as the “PadFone Station”, which in turn can be docked in a keyboard dock in a manner similar to an Asus Transformer.

The smartphone features Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich, a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 quad-core Cortex A15 processor, 2 GB RAM, 16 GB/32 GB/64 GB eMMc Flash storage, and a 4.7″ scratch-resistant 1280×720 HD Super IPS+ display.

Asus will release the device before the end of December in Europe (Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden) and Asia (Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and U.A.E). However, Australian consumers will have to wait until a release date is announced “at a later date”.

Australian consumers officially received the first generation Asus PadFone on August 14, although many consumers had opted to have an overseas version imported prior to its local release.