The Indian government has come up with the world’s cheapest tablet, Aakash, which will cost students only Rs. 2250. Unlike everyone’s expectations there exist no subsidies. The price of Aakash will lower down further once the sales hit the mark of 10 million. The visionaries of Aakash have the aim to lower down its price to $10 in future.
Aakash is named as UbiSlate commercially. It will be available for retail sales, but the date of the launch is still not sure. The tablet has been developed by NMCET and IIT Rajasthan. The tablet is being manufactured in collaboration with DataWind.
Aakash – Specifications
- Runs on Android 2.2
- 7 inch resistive touch screen
- Resolution of 800×480
- Connexant 366 MB processor with graphics accelerator
- 256 MB RAM
- 2 GB Flash memory
- Expandable memory up to 32 GB through microSD card
- GPRS
- Wi-Fi
- 2 standard USB ports
- 180 minutes battery life
- Loaded with UbiSurfer-browser with compression and acceleration
Made In India
There were stories that the tablet would be manufactured in Taiwan. Surprisingly, Aakash has been manufactured in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. 16% out of the 800 parts of the tablet are obtained from Indian suppliers. DataWind in Hyderabad can produce 7000 tablets per day and measures are being taken to increase the count.
Production Of 100,000 Tablets
In the first production lot 100,000 tablets will be produced that will be equally distributed across all the Indian states and Union Territories. The institutions receiving the tablets will forward their feedback to the team of Aakash, which will help in ameliorating the product.
Content on the Highway
According to Kapil Sibal, the Indian minister of Communications and Information Technology, Aakash is a highway and one needs something on that highway, which is the content. Sibal has openly invited all the entrepreneurs to begin a content revolution as this is still a big void that is to be filled.
In Aakash Sibal has got a lot that not many Android tablet makers could get. To begin with the tablet includes 70,000 ebooks, 21oo ejournals already stored in it through the IIT programme. More than 100,000 students from 1500 colleges will be accessing the content. Aakash will make the content accessible on a to a wider lot. The target is to spread knowledge to the 220 million students of India.
Availability
You all can book your “Akash” (Aakash) tablet on the link – aakashtablet.com – You can also call toll free number 1800-180-2180 for further details.
Conclusion
Aakash has still not hit the market thus it is hard to describe its working but as concluded from the webcast, the touch screen looks hard to press. But let’s not consider it as the only thing. The tablet has a keyboard. It comes in a leather pouch that holds everything together giving it the look of a netbook.
Everyone gets swept away in the glorious world of Super AMOLED touch screens and shiny iPads but what one needs to keep in mind is that Aakash is an attempt to provide tablets to the mass at a low cost. Its only purpose is to educate millions of children throughout the country who have no access to high quality education and also to eradicate illiteracy via digital teaching. Now the question is will Aakash succeed in it? With its content and low price the device definitely appeals and will succeed in revolutionizing education.
If the touch screen does not respond quickly, then switch to the keyboard. Take it this way that with Aakash in your hands studying would be handy, interesting and easy.
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