padfone 2 review – only one note

if u lands here via any search engine, chances are you are preparing to buy a new/used asus padfone 2 and looking for a review. OR, you connected your padfone 2 to the padfone station but your display/screen keeps on flicker flickering non-stop. this is not the usual review, but it’s purpose is to share ONE recent (shocking) experience with my own padfone2.

one fine day, i plugged in my padfone2 to the padfone station, and the screen keeps on blinking and flickering intermittently. yes, it’s absolutely abnormal.

so the hospital it’s sent to, and guess what the doctor tells me? “there’s a black thing that’s missing that’s causing the problem” i look and look and i really have no idea what the doctor is saying cos i din even realise there’s something there in the first place! the most shocking part follows:

“the replacement for the parts costs S$100 (singapore dollars),” said the doctor.
“what!?!”
“yes, you compare the socket with the one on the padfone station you will see the difference.”
“errr … hmmm … (actually i still cant tell what’s there or what’s not) … but why did Asus install something that will so easily drop out in the first place? i have never heard of such a problem from any other phone.”
“yes, just to set your expectation there. for this time, becos it’s the first time (err…sounds like it’ll drop easily again and again and again?!?) we’ll waive the charges”

today, after 5 working days, i get to get back the phone. and the first thing i do is to examine what’s “new” that went missing … hmm … seriously … such a small piece of thing cost $100 !?!

it’s real small, so i have taken a close up shot of it here:
padfone2-connector-highlighted

for those who owns a padfone 2, you can compare my photo with your phone and you’ll get what i mean (i think).

so the advice is this, for anyone who’s going to buy a padfone 2, (1) get a new set with warranty cover, (2) don’t ever ROOT your device before the warranty expires, (3) if you are buying a used set, make sure you inspect the charging connectors very closely, and make sure the black ‘parts’ shown in my photo are intact, (4) don’t buy this model, get the latest padfone infinity instead.

for record sake, the proprietary charging cable cost S$15 from the hospital.

and for record sake x2, ASUS has done away with this (stupid) connector and revert to the standard mini USB. so this problem should effectively be no more? i’m not sure 😛