Asus Wants a Cool UI for its Eee Pad

The Asus Eee Pad will feature an ARM CPU, Nvidia's Tegra 2, and a possible March 2010 ship date.

TechRadar recently spoke with Asus' Corporate Vice President, Eric Chen, in regards to the company's planned Eee Pad. The executive said that Asus is currently studying how people want to connect to their content, and how they want to interact with a user interface (UI). He said that the iPhone is a big success not because of its quality of calls, but because of the slick UI.

"Basically, [the Eee Pad] will have an ARM CPU and a 3G connection so you are always connected to the internet, so just like with the Eee Book you are always connected," he told the site. "And you can choose to play video or something, when you like. Now the key is how to combine the content together. That will be the key."

Unfortunately, TechRadar wasn't able to pull additional technical specs from the corporate VP. The details are somewhat slim: the Eee Pad will feature a touchscreen, stylus, and will be visually powered by Nvidia's Tegra 2. However, based on Chen's comments, it's possible that the OS will feature an iPhone-like interface that will make it easy for users to access games, tools, the Internet, and more.

John Swatton, UK Marketing Manager, told TechRadar that the company is currently in negotiations with Telcos, content providers, and commercial partners. "We want to be able to offer our consumers that ideal combination of price, specification, functionality and performance [with the Eee Pad]," he said.

It's speculated that the "affordable" Asus Eee Pad could hit the market as early as March, however it's more than likely that the device won't hit shelves until Q2 2010.