CHANDIGARH: The President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, will formally launch low-cost Aakash-II tablets at a special function to be held at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, on Sunday. Touted as the cheapest tablet in the world, the 7-inch computer device costs just Rs 2263, which will be supplied by the Government of India to students in the country at a subsidized cost of Rs 1130 per unit. The same tablet will also be available commercially in the open market at Rs 3500. Comparable devices already available in the market cost not less than Rs 6500.
Suneet Singh Tuli, Chief Executive Officer of the Montreal-based Datawind company which has developed the low-cost tablet, told newsmen at Chandigarh on Wednesday that the tabled would be used as a tool of education for students. Initially, 20,000 units were being supplied to IIT, Mumbai, for testing and familiarization by teachers and students. 250 units had already been handed over to the teachers in Mumbai for testing and mastering its various functions.
Tulli said that he had set up a manufacturing unit at Amritsar employing nearly 100 persons. Initially, 4 lakh units would be supplied to the government of India by the end of December. Another of lot of 50 lakh units would be supplied. Eventually, the government of India plans to supply units all the 22 crore students in the country.Giving technical specifications, he said the Aakash-II tablets comes with a 7-inch (800 x 480 pixels) display and run on Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich). They are powered by Cortex A8, 1 GHz processor and has 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal memory and a front-facing camera. Some models also have GPRS data support. These tablets have Ubisurfer-browser with Compression/ acceleration and IE8 rendering.
These tablets have pre-installed apps such as educational apps Sakshat portal, Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Cricket, Indian Express app, game based educational modules, interactive smart books and the full CBSE curriculum from Mango learning solutions, TestBag for taking tests and e-assessment and Intelligaia finger tracing apps to teach alphabet letter writing for toddlers. These tablets also have Indian language support including Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Punjabi/Gurmukhi and more from Reverie Language Technologies.
