Student centric low-cost yet rich with features Android Tablet worth 35 $ is launched in the country today by the Minister of Communications and Information technology, Kapil Sibal. After encountering an obstacle for over 6 months, the cheap Android tablet backed by the Indian government will be on commercial sale within 60 days.
The tablet is earlier branded as Sakshat Tablet, now known as Aakash is world’s cheapest Tablet, and is produced under government subsidy. Indian government will buy 100,000 units on a pilot basis at Rs 2250 ($47) and give it to post-secondary students for a discounted price of Rs 1,750 ($35). The Government intends to sell 10 million units at this price point. It has been developed and manufactured by British-based company Datawind in association with IIT Rajasthan and NME-ICT.
Aakash Technical Specifications
Hardware:
- Processor: 366 Mhz.
- Memory (RAM): 256MB RAM / Storage (Internal): 2GB Flash
- Storage (External): 2GB to 32GB Supported
- Peripherals (USB2.0 ports, number): 1 Standard USB port
- 3.5mm jack / Audio in: 3.5mm jack
- 7″ display with 800×480 pixel resolution
- Touch screen
- GPRS and WiFi
- Power and Battery: Up to 180 minutes on battery. AC adapter 200-240 volt range.
Software:
- OS: Android 2.2
- 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
- Video formats: MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI, FLV
The laptops will be distributed in school and university students across the country by the HRD ministry, and you cannot buy this tablet in any retail outlet yet. As a part of India’s National Mission for Education, Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT) 504 universities and 25,000 colleges countrywide would be the recipients of these laptops.
If this project goes well, this can be drastically transform the way education is instructed. It’s very good and important for our education system, but it can only be possible with help of our government and companies who make these products