Retailer Clove Technology has withdrawn the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime from sale, issuing a statement casting doubt on the Prime's functionality. Part of the statement says:
"We are at this time not satisfied that all units we could provide you with are working correctly, and performing to the standard we expect of the unit.
We have therefore taken the decision until further notice stop selling the ASUS Transformer Prime."
Clove has cancelled all orders, and has taken no payments from anyone who has made an order.
We understand there are reported issues with both Wi-Fi and GPS. We had no issues at all with Wi-Fi when reviewing the Eee Pad Transformer Prime, but we did have some issues with GPS.
Testing of location-based services as we wrote our review was primarily carried out within a Wi-Fi environment, and we have to admit we were not in a position to test GPS as thoroughly as we might by taking the Transformer Prime to multiple locations and getting frequent new fixes.
However we did notice that it was extremely slow to get a fix. We suspected this to be because of the aluminium chassis and indeed, when we applied a fix we found on the web of squeezing the upper parts of the chassis around the bezel between the fingers to improve internal connections, GPS fixes were achieved a lot faster.
In Asus's defence, while GPS is included in the Transformer Prime, it has been removed from the specification sheet. Asus has responded officially to Clove's withdrawal of the unit from sale with the following:
"ASUS is not aware of any quality issues with the Transformer Prime. We have already issued a statement regarding the GPS module, and provided a number of options to our customers.
We have conducted extensive testing on the Transformer Prime in laboratory conditions and the device is performing as expected in all areas and to all of our required parameters. ASUS prides itself on the rigorous testing of all products to ensure the highest quality possible.
We refute any and all claims from third parties regarding the quality of our products. Stock availability to-date has been constrained due to massive demand for the Transformer Prime. Large quantities of stock is arriving on a weekly basis and we expect to see increased availability within the UK shortly."
As for our own review, we stand by our extremely positive evaluation of the unit. We had no problems with Wi-Fi at all, and were able to rectify the GPS issue – albeit in a rather Heath Robinson manner.
Sandra Vogel
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Clove has not sold any Primes, so it isn't a question of 'withdrawing'. As they refuse to announce the results of their 'tests', I'm not convinced that they have ever had any, and that this isn't just sour grapes. This isn't to deny that the Prime does have problems; but not all of them do.
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I believe that not all Primes have issues. It is just that there are such a HUGE number of people with these issues. 100%=ALL, 30$=Lousy QA. I'm sending my 2nd prime back tomorrow. First one had light bleed, wifi wouldn't work where every other tablet I've owned would, and GPS was practically non-existent...and that's BEFORE Asus pulled the bait and switch tactic of saying that "GPS...what GPS ? It's not in the specs !" Ahem...my box said GPS right on it. Nuff said. The unit I'm returning has very minor light bleed (I can live with that), GPS that sometimes picks up satellites (forget navigation), and a wifi that drops from 20mb to 4mb going up the 5 steps to my den. My wife's Ipad gets the full 20mb practically everywhere in the house ! Asus should be ashamed for their handling of this whole debacle. If I were to liken them to a man I would say grow a pair and fix your mistakes !!!
Unfortunately main issue is that ASUS is refusing to accept that they make some mistake on this version of asus Transformer prime.
1 - GPS sensor are wrongly positioned inside tablet
2 - WI-FI sensor are wrongly positioned inside tablet
3 - VERY IMPORTANT On word, note, polar office and email cut,copy and paste option working very bad and mouse arrow or pad sensor arrow is shaking too much on display, is not possible highlight sentences to copy move or paste, very unreliable option, i suppose anyway this is software Asus problems I think easy to resolve with next update from asus.
4 - Google Email has very disorder version and full version from Google email, directly from browser, it doesn't work properly.