Asus Eee Pad Memo will tip up in January

TAIWANESE ELECTRONICS MAKER Asus will launch its Eee Pad Memo tablet next month.

The almost forgotten Eee Pad Memo tablet is now due to tip up in January and might have Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, according to Netbook News. When it does arrive it will be a 7in device with a stylus and a companion device.

The Memo first made an appearance at this year's consumer electronics show (CES) all the way back in January, so it has been a long time coming. The originally projected launch date for the tablet was June but this has been and gone with no sign of the Eee Pad Memo.

Unfortunately Asus has told us it has no information about the device to share. With 12 months between announcement and launch we're hoping the Eee Pad Memo will be worth the wait.

Asus has uniquely paired the Eee Pad Memo with a small mobile phone-like device, which apparently has been the cause of the long delay. The companion device will come with a transparent screen and will be able to make calls, send and receive text messages and access media through the tablet.

We saw the Eee Pad Memo at CeBIT in Germany way back in March, where it had lost the 3D capabilities touted at CES and was running Android 2.2 Froyo instead of Android 3.0 Honeycomb, which it was supposed to have.

Asus' other tablet, the Transformer Prime, is a quad-core device that has gone on sale today in Taiwan and will hit the US this month too. However, punters in the UK and other countries in Europe will have to wait until next year for that shiny device. µ