Re: If only they made the phone part...
Old stuff here I know, but if anyone is reviewing for a unit from my favorite trailing edge supplier, eBay, this update may be of some use.
Dunno what the "90 degrees out of whack" means in regard to the Padfone X (10-inch tablet, and higher end phone vs the Mini). I thought the idea with a tablet was to use it in landscape/tablet mode. In that usage, the X has the phone inserted in "physical phone mode" (portrait orientation), so maybe that bothers you, but it is very snugly encased, and the UI changes completely to tablet mode, much like the Moto Atrix/Bionic Webtop combo does with their Lapdock (if you let it - the Asus does not give the option to avoid that switch. Also, there is no orientation change as the Lapdock is only meant for landscape use vs the tablet rotation modes of the Padfone. I commented more here on the Moto package I had back in October, 2014, when this topic was active.), so it really does not matter.
Since switching from Verizon to AT&T, I have had the X for about 8 months now, and it "just works". And if you rotate the docked phone tablet 90 degrees to portrait mode, the image rotates just fine - great for reading long articles and ebooks on the 1920x1200 10-inch screen, although a bit heavy to hold in the hand for long times (especially with my carpal tunnel), so I have a folding stand for that scenario.
It has been very easy to carry around in a small 8x10-inch stretchy shoulder bag "man purse", along with a small bluetooth mini keyboard and the folding reading stand, that allows me to get around without a notebook PC where I used to take one such as on weekend trips, or for hanging out at a coffee shop.
All that praise aside, I am running an extended experiment in switching to a Windows Phone (8.1), Lumia 640 ($80 new) to see if the MS ecosystem is less intrusive, and more productive than Google/Droid, so a companion notebook or tablet/keyboard is part of my travel kit again - not clear to me yet if the new tradeoffs are worth it. I miss some Android apps, and the Padfone X dock integration, but the WP apps/ecosystem is richer than its first few years, and it integrates well with Windows on PC's, and not badly at all with Linux, my preferred PC platfrom.
WP works well for my wife as her first smartphone in switching after years on feature phones, but she is not as "mobile data intensive" as I am. I sort of made her the initial tester with WP (Lumia 635 - $50 new, now on a 640) when we switched to AT&T around the turn of the year, and believe it was a much easier learning curve for her than trying to get her up to speed on Android (took less of my time as her "tech support" I am sure ;^} ). Also, the hardware entry prices are a huge advantage over comparable Android units.
FWIW