By Herman Lai, posted Apr 5, 2012 at 5:30 PM, 1,622 views,

Asus Padfone Is Ready For Pre-Orders in Taiwan, Starting at $610

People have been waiting for this exciting hybrid device after Asus has been showing off its PadFone concept for nearly a year. Finally, it debut in MWC just a couple of months ago, and it started taking pre-orders in Taiwan yesterday. ASUS big wigs like Jonney Shih & Jerry Shen were presented in the ceremony and announced pre-order starting April 6 and would be hitting the streets on April 20. The company also disclosed Padfone will be heading to a few other countries including Singapore, Hong Kong & Germany, but they didn’t provide with a specific time frame.

The phone alone is priced at NT 17,990 (around $610 US), plus an extra $305 for the tablet dock and the Bluetooth Headset, and another $152 for the laptop dock. If you want all the accessories altogether, including the tablet dock, keyboard dock, bluetooth headset and a protective case, it will set you back at NT 28,901 ($980). ASUS also offered a deal for you to purchase all the accessories but just without the keyboard dock, and that’s priced at NT 25,901 ($878).

Chunghwa Telecom will be offering the device to the local markets. The carrier offers the Padfone in either a one-year contract plan or a two-years contract plan. For those who sign a one-years contract plan will have to pay for the monthly plan as well as the cost of the Padfone, the cheapest monthly plan is NT 649 (around $22) per month, the phone itself will cost NT 14,390 ($488). The cheapest monthly plan for customers who sign a two-years contract will still be the same as the one-year contract, but the phone itself will cost NT 9,490 ($322). If you want to have a tablet dock with the carrier, then you must choose the two-years contract (as there’s no tablet dock offered in the one-year contract plan), it will cost an extra $491 for it.

All the Padfone deals are quite expensive, any of you guys going to buy it? Besides, its specs such as its 1.5Ghz dual-core processor, 16GB storage, 1GB RAM, 8mp camera, and so forth, are starting to look outdated, while there’re quad-core phones and tablets offering by companies like Huawei and Apple.

Source: ASUS Taiwan Facebook