The ASUS Transformer Prime made waves in the tablet realm when it was announced last year due to the fact that it is the first slate to pack a powerful quad-core processor under the hood. This was however overshadowed by the decision of ASUS to have the bootloader of the tablet locked when it first hit the shelves in December. The company drew the ire of not only the homebrew community but by every tablet fanboy as well who was hoping to get his fill of customizations on the powerful tablet.
Buy the Asus Transformer Prime starting at $525.
ASUS countered by announcing that a bootloader unlock tool for the ASUS Transformer Prime is already in development and will see the light of day come February 2012. And now, the day has come for us to rejoice. ASUS has finally released the bootloader unlock tool and can be downloaded from the support site of the company. The unlock tool is simply a .apk file that you need to download and install on the tablet and before you know it, you will already have the capability to mod the ASUS Transformer Prime to your heart’s content and rock every imaginable custom ROM available for the tablet.
Of course, if you tinker with the innards of your ASUS Transformer Prime, you should be well aware of the fact that doing so will render you warranty useless so tinker at your own risk. If you are really intent though on “unshackling” your tablet, head on over to the support site of ASUS for the necessary files to get the bootloader of the ASUS Transformer Prime unlocked. And if you have already forgotten the components and capabilities of the tablet, its specs sheet can be found below to give you a quick memory refresh.
The ASUS Transformer Prime was announced last October but the tablet only managed to show up in the shelves in December, just in time for the holiday season. Gone is the bulk of the original Transformer with the successor packing an extremely sexy and good-looking frame that has dimensions of 263 x 180.8 x 8.3 mm while its catch weight is pegged at 586 grams.
Under the hood, the ASUS Transformer Prime is a veritable speed demon thanks largely to its NVIDIA Tegra 3 chipset. Its quad-core 1.3 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor working in conjunction with a full gigabyte of RAM enables the tablet to blast through all the tasks you throw at it without missing a step while its internal storage of either 32GB or 64GB can still be expanded through the tablet’s dedicated memory expansion slot. Its 10.1-inch Super IPS+ LCD display with its 1280 x 800 resolution and 16M colors brings about brightness and contrast like we’ve never seen before in addition to its impressive sunlight legibility and exceptional viewing angles. The camera department of the ASUS Transformer Prime is just as impressive with an 8MP autofocus shooter at its back panel and a 1.2MP video chat camera out front.
Sad to say, the ASUS Transformer Prime is still plagued with Wi-Fi and GPS issues but the release of the bootloader unlock tool for the tablet ought to more than compensate for all of its shortcomings. Buy the Asus Transformer Prime starting at $525.
