At long last, the much-awaited Padfone that has mesmerized us since it first previewed last year, is here. And we can’t tell you how excited we are to finally have this product has officially been made official at Mobile World Congress today.

The brains of the whole operation is powered by the Padfone itself, and features a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED qHD screen. And, just as we  had predicted, the smartphone is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 with an Adreno 225 GPU. It sports an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash and an F2.2 “5-element” autofocusing lens. Sure, no quad core Tegra 3, but this is one seriously powerful SoC. Sounds pretty cool huh? In fact, if you’re interested, check out how the S4 stands up to Tegra 3 here.

Other notable features include a 16 – 64 GB internal storage capacity (expandable via microSD), Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, A-GPS, HDMI, a gyroscope, a compass and a 1,520mAh battery. As far as the connectivity is concerned, the Padfone smartphone supports WCDMA, EDGE/ GPRS/ GSM and HSPA+. According to Asus, download speeds in this device could reach up to 42Mbps.

Thankfully, Asus has confirmed that the Padfone will be running Android 4. Really though, the Padfone represents the culmination of so many of our devices, Laptop, Smartphone, and tablet, all in one. Really what’s so amazing about the Padfone is its “1 SIM for 3 devices” functionality. Meaning, you are getting three devices altogether – the smartphone, the tablet and the keyboard dock (you’ve already seen that via our previous “’1 + 1 + 1″ blog post).

The tablet component of the arrangement is a 10.1-inch station that has the same features of the Asus Transformer Prime tablet. Further, the tablet also increases the Padfone’s battery life five times more than its standard capability. If that wasn’t already enough, Asus has gone the extra mile and made it compatible a keyboard dock that transforms the Padfone into a laptop, thanks to its full physical keyboard.

The PadFone is 128 x 65.4 x 9.2mm, weighing 128g, while official specs for the measurements of the tablet haven’t been formalized. Either way, both devices connected should weigh in at around 700 or so grams.

Of course, the tablet component of the whole unit, aka the Padfone Station, doesn’t have any processor whatsoever, nor memory or storage. Specs wise, it still does feature the following:

• Front-facing 1.3Mp camera
• No camera, but does make space for the padfone to use its own camera
• 10.1 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel capacitive multitouch Corning Gorilla Glass screen
• 24.4 Whr battery
• Front-facing 1.3Mp camera
• Phone and GPS antennas
• Speakers
• Vibration sensors

But wait, there’s more – Asus caught us off guard by adding a stylus headset that functions like a regular headset for making phone calls while allowing you to use the device as a sketchpad at the same time. Yes, the stylus headset, to the envy of all HTC Flyer and Galaxy Note users, has a microphone and a speaker on it. How cool is that? Kudos to Asus for a very impressive product! We can’t wait for the Padfone to arrive in April this year.

Excited? I bet the carriers aren’t. I would be absolutely amazed if this device was offered on contract, at a subsidized price by any major carrier. That being said, it will be interesting to see how they react to people putting their SIM cards in them – especially those of you with unlimited data. Note the HSPA+ functionality. We’ll keep you posted on one of 2012′s most amazing products!

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