India’s much awaited ultra low cost Aakash tablet is finally here and is creating ripples all around. It is jointly developed by the London-based company DataWind with the Indian Institute of Technology Rajasthan and manufactured by the India-based company Quad, at a new production centre in Hyderabad — under a trial run of 100,000 units. The tablet was officially launched as the Aakash in New Delhi on Oct 5, 2011. A substantially revised second generation model is projected for manufacture beginning in early 2012.
The 350 gm weight and 7 inch (800x480 resolution) Multi-touch resistive touchscreen display tablet features 366 MHz processor with the Android 2.2 Froyo operating system, on chip Graphics accelerator and HD Video processor, 256 MB LP-DDR2 Ram, has two USB Ports, will have access to Getjar, a proprietary market, rather than the Android Market.
The 350 gm weight and 7 inch (800x480 resolution) Multi-touch resistive touchscreen display tablet features 366 MHz processor with the Android 2.2 Froyo operating system, on chip Graphics accelerator and HD Video processor, 256 MB LP-DDR2 Ram, has two USB Ports, will have access to Getjar, a proprietary market, rather than the Android Market.
| Developer | DataWind with IIT |
| Manufacturer | Datawind |
| Introductory price | 2999 Rs (1100 Rs for students) |
| Operating system | Android 2.2 |
| CPU | 366 MHz processor |
| Storage capacity | 2 GB-32 GB microSD slot |
| Display | 800 × 480 px, 7 in (18 cm) diagonal |
| Input | Multi-touch resistive touchscreen, headset controls |
| Camera | None |
| Connectivity | GPRS and Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n) |
| Online services | Getjar marketplace,(not Android marketplace) |
| Weight | 350 g (12 oz) |
| Battery | 2100 mAh lithium-polymer battery/ Runs 180 Min On battery |
| Website | www.ubislate.com |
Launching and Response
The much awaited India’s ultra low cost Aakash tablet is finally launched. In association with Ministry of Infornmation & Technology (India), Datawind launches Ubislate 7 in India as Aakash. Aakash Tablet is set to bridge the big India DIGITAL DIVIDE. Its main objective is to provide students of India, especially in its countryside, a cheap alternative to PC. Through Aakash tablet, students in India would have access to good quality study content like video lectures, e-books etc.
The Indian government announced it purchased tablet computers for the equivalent of $50 each from London-based DataWind, which employs 65 engineers in its largest office in Montreal. The tablets will be sold to students at the subsidized price of $35 and later in shops for about $60.
Most of India’s 1.2 billion people are poor and products such as Apple Inc.’s iPad are beyond the reach of many in the fast-growing middle class.
“The rich have access to the digital world; the poor and ordinary have been excluded. Aakash will end that digital divide,” Telecoms and Education Minister Kapil Sibal said.
The government is buying the first units of the lightweight touch-screen device, called Aakash, or “sky” in Hindi, from DataWind, which conceived and designed the device in its Montreal office on René Lévesque Blvd. and then subcontracted out the assembly of those devices to India.
A pilot run of 100,000 units will be given to students for free, with the first 500 handed out at the launch to a mixed response.
The Akash Tablet supports:
- Document Rendering
* Supported Document formats: DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS, XLSX, ODT, ODP
* PDF viewer, Text editor
- Multimedia and Image Display
* Image viewer supported formats: PNG, JPG, BMP and GIF
* Supported audio formats: MP3, AAC, AC3, WAV, WMA
* Supported video formats: MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI, FLV.
Add ons: Commercial version only
1. Supports Car chargers and external antenna
2. External keyboard case
3. 2 No. of USB ports
4. Work as normal GSM phone to make and receive calls.
5. 3G SIM and 3G dongle supported in commercial version.
Pros:
1.Low cost
2.Some
tablet maker didn’t include GSM connectivity even at high price instead
of 3G they provide WiFi connectivity,but Akash tablet gives you both
options GSM as well as WiFi connectivity.
Cons:
1:366 MHz processor won’t gives you multi-tasking experience.
2.Future Android upgrades are not suitable for such a low configuration Tablet.
What’s missing:
1.Internal Camera
2.GPS
3. Bluetooth
Reviews:
As per Jaimon Joseph:
The student version we got came loaded with applications. Everything from Facebook, to stuff that lets you create and edit documents. There are games, a calendar cum organiser, even advanced lessons in Physics – though they used up just a quarter of the screen and were hard to read. And we do have a few other gripes.
1. The screen is rather unresponsive. Sometimes I had to push the screen really hard to get a response.
2. It also heats up really fast. Which means in the heat and dust of India, it could face problems.
3. It connects to the internet only using Wi-Fi. Which means if a student is travelling or in a room that doesn't have Wi-Fi, he's stumped.
Among the apps we liked is this electronic book reader. But it opens only length wise (in portrait orientation), while almost everything else on the tablet works only sideways (in landscape). Opening any website triggers repeated security warnings. Playing YouTube videos is easy but stopping them - irritatingly difficult. Strangely, the tablet wouldn't open any of the movie files on our USB drive – even common formats such as .avi and .flv.
Also, despite its Android operating system, the tablet won't install anything from the Android App Market. That puts thousands of applications out of a student's reach. Plus, the battery hardly lasts three hours – not enough for an average day in college. Unless you bunk most of your classes.
Finally, we got a pro to open up the Aakash, to see what the world's cheapest tablet computer looks like under the hood. One thing we found is, IIT Rajasthan worked no miracles here. The stuff that runs this machine, can simply be bought off the shelf.
"It was a standard system on chip, which includes a microprocessor, controller, even controls for the audio and video. It is a standard Connexant chip which includes an ARM processor." says Prashanto K Roy, editor, Dataquest.
The workmanship inside isn't top notch. Common electric tape holds the circuit boards down. Cheap wires connect the circuits instead of more efficient data cables. But the real let down was the tablet's ruggedness. Screwing back the boards we opened up was a nightmare.
"Putting the screws back was tough because the screw threads on the plastic side slipped. So serviceability might be an issue," observes Roy.
1. The screen is rather unresponsive. Sometimes I had to push the screen really hard to get a response.
2. It also heats up really fast. Which means in the heat and dust of India, it could face problems.
3. It connects to the internet only using Wi-Fi. Which means if a student is travelling or in a room that doesn't have Wi-Fi, he's stumped.
Among the apps we liked is this electronic book reader. But it opens only length wise (in portrait orientation), while almost everything else on the tablet works only sideways (in landscape). Opening any website triggers repeated security warnings. Playing YouTube videos is easy but stopping them - irritatingly difficult. Strangely, the tablet wouldn't open any of the movie files on our USB drive – even common formats such as .avi and .flv.
Also, despite its Android operating system, the tablet won't install anything from the Android App Market. That puts thousands of applications out of a student's reach. Plus, the battery hardly lasts three hours – not enough for an average day in college. Unless you bunk most of your classes.
Finally, we got a pro to open up the Aakash, to see what the world's cheapest tablet computer looks like under the hood. One thing we found is, IIT Rajasthan worked no miracles here. The stuff that runs this machine, can simply be bought off the shelf.
"It was a standard system on chip, which includes a microprocessor, controller, even controls for the audio and video. It is a standard Connexant chip which includes an ARM processor." says Prashanto K Roy, editor, Dataquest.
The workmanship inside isn't top notch. Common electric tape holds the circuit boards down. Cheap wires connect the circuits instead of more efficient data cables. But the real let down was the tablet's ruggedness. Screwing back the boards we opened up was a nightmare.
"Putting the screws back was tough because the screw threads on the plastic side slipped. So serviceability might be an issue," observes Roy.
Posted in: Gadgets,Tablets
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