I told you guys in the announcement post that the ASUS Transformer Prime raised the bar for just about every Android tablet out there. Now, we’re going to delve a little deeper into the hardware of the Prime and explain exactly why. Starting with my favorite part, the sexy outer body and gorgeous 10.1-inch screen.

With a metallic surface and glossy display, it’s not hard to imagine that the Transformer Prime would become a fingerprint magnet. To keep your quad-core tablet looking good, ASUS had the foresight to apply a fingerprint resistant, hydro-oleophobic coating over the screen and metal surface. We’ve seen this before in the HTC Legend back in the day and we’re not exactly sure why it went extinct but we’re definitely happy it’s back and on the Prime. Bye, bye smudges and hello Popeye’s chicken!

If fingerprints covering your super-tab aren’t really going to keep you up at night, how about scratches or cracked displays? Yeah — we’ve all been there with our Android smartphones. Well, the Prime display features the, Android fan-favorite, Corning Gorilla Glass giving you the peace of mind that no matter how many spills your tablet may take, the screen will always come out unscathed.

ASUS has not only upgraded the durability of their display but the picture quality as well. They’ve introduced an all new Super IPS+ display that provides for a brighter, more vivid display allowing for better outdoor visibility and superior 178 degree viewing angles. When it comes to an Android tablet, I always say, “She better have great nits.”

The screen improvements don’t stop there. ASUS also felt the need to improve on touch-screen responsiveness, a feature that never even crossed my mind until today. The Prime manages to halve the normal response time from when a device detects your finger movement and follows along. I’ve seen this talked about in our comments section in past posts and was something I thought had more to do with software than hardware. It’s this kind of attention to detail that helps the overall user experience and something other Android OEM’s could learn a lot from.

Described simply as “amazing,” ASUS even managed to increase not just the megapixels — but the quality of the camera from the previous Transformer. The 8MP camera has been improved to shoot in full 1080p with a larger F2.4 aperture and back-illuminated CMOS sensor. Simply put — this camera rocks. While most people don’t normally take out their tablet when snapping some quick pics, the Prime just may change all that. And because the camera is on the back, those incognito shots of the hot girl at the coffee shop have never been easier.

One area you don’t normally think about when buying a new tablet are the speakers. I pretty much just pray they’re loud enough to watch videos with and hope for the best. Well, ASUS decided to up the ante with the speakers on the Prime equipping them with new speakers 6% larger featuring their ASUS SonicMaster Technology. Watching videos and playing music has never sounded better.

Last, but certainly not least, is an issue that is always on the minds of Android users everywhere: battery life. Some of you may have assumed that because the Prime is rocking a quad-core processor, that battery life would likely suffer. Wrongfully so. The included Nvidia Tegra 3 processor features a dedicated ultra low voltage fifth-core for handling non-CPU intensive tasks like email and Twitter. Think about it. Why use all you cores when you don’t have to? This results in approximately 12-hours of battery life for the Transformer Prime and when docked, you can squeeze out a full 18 hours (depending on usage). Color me impressed.

So you can see, ASUS didn’t just stop at safe — they stopped at extraordinary. They could have easily made a few aesthetic changes to the original Eee Pad Transformer and called it a day. Instead, they looked into all the details and introduced not only a worthy successor but an exceptional piece of hardware that raises the bar not just for Android OEM’s but Apple as well. I don’t know about you guys but I’m all hot and bothered. How about you?