The saga of India’s “$35 tablet” is long and slightly disappointing. While the idea of low-cost, standard hardware to be distributed in needful communities is a great one, the fact is that the device itself is more or less junk. Poorly built, with a small battery, outdated OS, and low-quality touchscreen, the Aakash has not had a good reception among people who care about such things.
But it’s… → Read More
The low-cost Indian tablet known as the Aakash, which we have followed in its career over the last year, is finally shipping. In late December they opened up orders for the first batch of 30,000 units, and brought so much traffic to their retail site that an Indian cyber regulation agency called to inform them they were possibly under attack. And in the last two weeks, they’ve racked up over 1.4… → Read More
India is getting a second government-sponsored tablet. The first model (the so-called Aakash) sold out in just a few days after it was launched online last week, but maker DataWind has already followed up with another 7-inch model, the Ubislate 7. It was actually announced a few weeks back, but is now available for pre-order, priced at US$57 (US$10 more than the original Aakash), and features much… → Read More
You must recall the $35 Indian tablet. This was the tablet that through the magic of subsidies — and outsourced Chinese labor — was going to rain from the mana from the heavens and cover all of India with affordable touchscreen computing. Yeah, that’s not going to happen anytime soon. → Read More
Oh boy.. turns out that the much advertised $35 “Indian Tablet” isn’t actually from India. The reality is that the tablet is made by a Chinese manufacturer named Hivision, and sold as the Speedpad. It was originally seen at CeBIT this year, and Hivision said it would sell for around $100. → Read More
The joy of India’s $35 tablet seems too have died down a bit of late, but that doesn’t mean we can’t explore the Allgo “Stamp” system-on-a-chip it’s supposed to be running. Essentially this is an entire computer on a single die, which means you can fit the entire system along with an 800 x 480 pixel screen into a case that costs $35 to build.
It’s not odd that they chose this chip: it’s the pure… → Read More
“It is probably the cheapest innovation of all times.” Bear in mind that the $35 price on this tablet, which we heard about a couple weeks back, is a fantasy until it is actually in production and releasing with that price. And also note that when the narrator is talking about how well it handles Android 1.6, the video is sped up quite a bit. I’ll believe it when I see it &mdash… → Read More
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