Although google/asus gave the device way earlier to websites and magazines, they have to agree to only publish their reviews on and after a specific date - this being Dec 1 1am US time.

pretty standard procedure for many electronic device.

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Dec 1 2011, 05:41 PM

that is because of marketing la. nama aja quad core, but each of the cores itself are different. for instance, one of the cores is 5MHz, and used for very specific purposes.

that, and those linpacks or whatever tests are just synthetic tests, don't really translate to real-world use. I'm pretty sure those tests does not support the instruction extensions of quad-core processors yet.

Truth be told I'm more interested to see HD video playback performance for the Prime like non-baseline-encoded h.264 MKV videos. kinda sucks that only movies encoded by groups like FASM or HDLiTE (heavily compressed) have acceptable framerates. buat lah android version 10 pon, if google still refuse to address movie playback issues then forever la android is just a hack-OS, not a real one.

would Prime be released in singapore first ah? don't really mind driving down there just to get one

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Dec 2 2011, 01:31 AM

if we're a (potentially) big market then they'd release it (together with 3G) as quickly as US. One can only hope.

If there's no 3G then there's not much point in buying Prime really when we already have the TF101. Even the keyboard dock has 1 less USB port what

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Dec 4 2011, 10:52 AM

the biggest issue with using phone as the wifi hotspot instead of your tablet is battery life. I'd rather let the phone connect my hotspot-enabled tablet since the tablet has bigger battery and (logically) better reception due to the larger size (thus larger antenna, generally lah). i carry my Transformer pretty much everywhere, so it's a no-brainer for it to be the hotspot IMO. It already is my extra battery charger for my phone

you can, but it's less elegant, and one more device (and cable) to carry

RM2200. because this is Malaysia, new model must be more expensive

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Dec 6 2011, 10:16 AM

This is what I did upon anticipating a loong flight to Beijing and beyond.

1. Install MX Video player (and the arm7v codec) from Market
2. only get mkv videos done/encoded by groups like FASM and HDLiTE by searching those names on your favourite place to get movies or, if you know what you're looking for, get the ones encoded specially for xbox 360 or ps3 playback, or encoded using baseline profile.
3. reformat your microsd to exFAT (more details here ), tools available for xp and win7 also. no need to worry about 4gb limit anymore. But I personally bought a 500gb external notebook hdd seagate goflex, one that doesn't need external power. put all my fasm & hdlite encoded movies there. and apparently all my ntfs-formatted thumbdrives work
4. in mxplayer, can set mkv files to use hardware playback, with software audio playback. perfect, no lag (except a bit during seeking the movie) at all except for scenes with many light rays, but won't go out of sync.

I could get my transfofoformer to play movies one whole day straight during the flight. the keyboard really helps as a really really stable stand, especially during rough flights. by far, the best experience I've had with an electronic device (before was the discontinued 20gig sony mp3 player which played music for one whole week without charge )

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Dec 10 2011, 12:46 AM

haha, not exactly that much of a trouble. I know google/android have yet to make audio/video a priority of some sort, so i searched for a player that supports hardware decoding - from rockplayer to bsplayer to mobo to tons of others - before settling on mx. and i know that android's hardware is quite slow than desktop, so no high profile or high quality or large file sized hd files, so i opted for baseline encoded ones. searched around, and finally found fasm and hdlite encoded to be the best (for hollywood lah).

actually the display for transfofofomer is small enough that should you play a good quality 540p movies, it will still look almost as good as a baseline hd files. that's what i've found. can try downloading 540p + 720p + 1080p FASM-encoded files (since they have quite a few versions of the same movie) and see for yourself.

i wouldn't trust the reviewers that much if i were you. they tend to sugarcoat it a bit when it comes to reviewing. for instance, they didn't tell you the trouble that you gotta do to "play mkv without hiccups" right?

well you can try transcoding your mkv into smaller ones, but that alone is a whole new world, and to get the best quality and speed is a matter of hours and hours of testing and re encoding and command lines

but every mkv? hmmm i doubt it. mkv is just a container after all, you can put divx video, or x264, or bluray, or dvd, or all at once. even mp4 alone has many different variants. but hey, if prime can really do that then great man! no need to get baseline encoded anymore

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/6888 > comparing bluray to FASM encoded

540p encodes are basically 1/2 of the resolution of 1080p encodes

540 x 2 = 1080

get it?

basically imagine staring at 1920 x 1080 pixels on a 42" tv. or 1280 x 720 pixels, just for comparison's sake.

well imagine, looking at the same amount of pixels on a 10" lcd screen. of course, the actual pixel size is a lot smaller to fit in all of those 1280x720 pixels right.



a fast and easy way to determine wether the video is "good enough" for tablet viewing, is to open the video file on your pc, preferably on a HD resolution lcd monitor.

if the original video size on your monitor is about the same size as your tablet, and you feel the video has acceptable quality, then ok lah. if not then gotta get a higher-res video la.

if the original video size is big, or fill up your monitor (if it's 1920x1080 resolution lah, since your monitor also that resolution), then scale it down until about the size of your tablet screen. if the quality improves, then ok lah tu.

sucks that many many android apps aren't compatible with the Transformer


but surprisingly when i get those apps from "other sources" most of the time i can play it flawlessly. like today's 10cent apps asphalt 6 hd and the sims, they all work on my transformer perfectly, but you can't download it from market because it's not compatible.

generally yes, but only to a certain extent.

if you buy a high-end HDTV, it'll probably have a very good upscaling tech built into it.

what most people don't know is that 1080p is just the pixel size. if a 1080p video is poorly encoded, low bitrate, it will look worse than an upscaled 720p with high bitrate, high profile encoding, etc.

for comparison's sake (easy style comparison):
Bluray 1080p = 25GB disc = 40Megabit persecond bitrate (video data per second) MAX
DVD9 = 8GB = 10 Mbps
DVD5 = < 5GB = 2-5Mbps
Astro 1080p HD = 1~3 Megabit per second per channel (the more HD channel, the less bitrate per channel)
1080p MKV file = 2 - 5 Mbps, some can go 10 Mbps

there are many, many factors concerning video encoding/rendering technology and skill, which is why groups like FASM, HDLiTE, etc exists. because it's never as easy as comparing 1080p vs 720p.

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Dec 13 2011, 02:06 AM

yeah they don't have everything, but the selection is good and they take the time to offer the same movie in many resolutions

others might work too... well i guess we have to try and report here lah

unfortunately I've yet to find a decent-enough mkv/hd streaming player for the transformer/android. the linus guy in your link mentioned about a streaming app, but not too clear with the name.

that said, with MX Video Player I'm able to (partially) stream videos. what I normally do is i open my shared videos folder from my Win7 pc (using File Manager HD), navigate to the mp4/mkv and play using MX. streaming video files downloaded from youtube (from my pc) is perfect, but streaming other mkv/mp4 (even hdlite or fasm ones) is a bit of a hit or miss (more miss than hit). most of the time cannot be played at all. anybody else have any luck?

would they be releasing the 64GB model over here? With all the 10 cent 3D games and tegra games that I've been buying over the past few days, right now i gotta shuffle and remove-reinstall games just to get some extra space.

sucks that google thought honeycomb have no need for any additional storage in their OS

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Dec 14 2011, 02:12 AM

it's different. See Honeycomb (in transformer or xoom or most tablets) or Android 3.x doesn't support running/storing apps or app data to external storage - be it SD Card, MicroSD or USB drives.

if you look at the file structure, the folder /sdcard is in the internal memory itself. Quite different than say, virtually every phone which runs Android 2.x where /sdcard is the actual SD/MicroSD itself.


if you're like me, been downloading 3D/Tegra apps like crazy especially during these $0.10 app sale for the last 7 days, you'll see your space shrinking like crazy. Most 2D apps are OK, the highest amount of downloadable data being only 20MB or 50MB. But 3D apps, not so small.

Asphalt 6 HD: 500+ MB
GOF2: 500MB
Great Battles: Medieval: 500MB
Shadowgun (really pretty and awesome 3D shooter): 600MB
Captain America: 250MB
Riptide: 500MB
Trainz: 300MB
Pro Eleven Soccer: 150MB

...... and so on


most of these 3D games will download extra files to the /sdcard folder. so in Honeycomb/Transformer it will be the internal memory, while phones it will be in the microsd card folder.


my 3D games in total (around 20) takes up almost 8GB of space luckily my work files can be saved to my 32GB microsd and 32GB sd. if you read from llobak's link, you can have a better idea of what google is doing with honeycomb (and android 4.0 icw ):



you can read further in the link to see why with Honeycomb google decided that /sdcard should be internal, and not the real sd card (which is /Removable/SD or /Removable/MicroSD). I can understand google's decision, but it would leave power users like me unable to maximise the full use of my Android machine. If 16GB is a lot for you, then OK man, good on ya but for people like me, we really have to choose carefully of our Honeycomb/ICW device with big big internal storage, like the 64GB Transformer Prime

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Dec 14 2011, 09:47 PM

which page! agh dammit i checked the asus my fb page takde pon

no word on the 3g 64gb eh?

no point la. people cannot sue other people based on name alone, it has to be industry-related.

new firmware is gooding yo!

wtf pay so much but no GPS, 1 less USB? hmmmmm day by day this device looks so unattractive to me