Transformer Prime ICS upgrade in January

The Asus Transformer Prime has been causing much interest since it was unveiled as the first tablet to run a quad-core processor.

And we had some good news regarding the device at the start of the week, when rumours of a potential delay due to wi-fi issues were quashed.

Asus said that as far as the company was aware, the Transformer Prime was due to ship in the States on schedule at the beginning of next week.

It won’t be in the UK that soon, but should be winging its way over here shortly after in January, fingers crossed anyway as that isn’t confirmed.

If it does pitch up then, that’ll be good timing, as the latest news to emerge from the Prime rumour mill is that the tablet won’t be running on Honeycomb for long.

In fact, an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest incarnation of Android, is due to land in January as well.

So with any luck we’ll get the Prime running Android 4.0 out of the box in January or shortly after.

Early hands-on reports of the Prime have come back pretty positive, and that’s with it running Honeycomb. Asus might well have a strong Android contender in the form of the device which can transform into a laptop via a keyboard dock.

The only potential fly in the ointment is the price, as the 32GB wi-fi Prime will set you back £550. However, that does come with the keyboard dock, so you’re getting a full notebook-tablet hybrid.