14 DAY TRIAL // Expected to arrive shortly, Asus' Transformer Prime tablet powered by Nvidia's Kal-El quad-core processor was apparently pushed back a month as the Taiwanese company now wants to ship the device with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
According to DigiTimes, Google has agreed to help Asus tune up the Nvidia Kal-El powered tablet for ICS, as the company wants to persuade the Taiwanese hardware maker not to shift its focus to Windows 8 tablets instead.
Google wasn't so helpful when it comes to assisting Asian companies to migrate from Honeycomb 3.2 to Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, but the search giant is now looking to improve its collaboration with tablet makers.
Asus is one of the highest priorities on Google's list, as the company has plans to release two Windows 8 tablets in the second half of 2012, which the search giant seems to consider a threat to its mobile OS.
Initially, the Transformer Prime was expected to be released on November 9, as Asus' chairman Jonney Shih revealed during the AsiaD conference.
As many of you certainly know, the 10.1-incher is built around an Nvidia Tegra 3 system-on-a-chip (SoC) device and comes fitted inside a 8.3mm thick chassis that gets its design cues from company's recently launched Ultrabooks.
Just like the original Transformer tablet, the Prime can also be connected to a keyboard docking station to provide a more laptop-like experience.
The Transformer Prime will also come fitted with an SD card slot, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, and with a mini HDMI port for connecting it to an external display.
All this hardware is powered by a massive battery (as it was revealed by the Prime's FCC teardown) that should be able to deliver an impressive 14.5 hours of battery life.
Rumors regarding the delay of the Transformer Prime come just one day after we reported that Asus Holland has suggested that the tablet won't be available in Europe until January 6.