18th September 2012
The Aakash tablets will be first used at colleges, where the government has deployed free WiFi access, so far reaching 1,800 institutions. But the commercial version now includes a SIM card slot. A special agreement with a network operator lets users purchase unlimited data in India for less than $2 (98 Indian rupees) a month. Compound that with the fact that this tablet lets users tether to create portable hotspots (in contrast to the strict telco rules in the U.S.), and you all of a sudden realize this cheap tablet really could bring the Web to the masses. In India, 80 percent of the 1.2 billion population have access to GPRS network coverage. Looking beyond India, this could mean big things if such cheap plans are also available. It’s certainly easier to put up cell phone towers than lay down fiber optic cables, helping overcome the problem of infrastructure in developing countries.
9/18/2012 @ 8:19AM |4,930 views
Alice Truong
Image: Alice Truong for Forbes
As the day was coming to an end, I met up with a stranger at a railway station who handed me a plastic bag. This has the potential to be world changing, he told me in between trains coming by.
World changing, huh? When I’m pitched a product, I’m often told lofty statements, but rarely do they meet up. Let’s revise that: Never have they met up.
This, though, seems different.
Image: Alice Truong for Forbes
Not yet on the market, the tablet inside had been seen only by a few set of eyes in the U.S. It’s likely a device you’re already familiar with, making splashy headlines when it debuted last fall as the world’s cheapest tablet. Geared toward schools, the Aakash (Hindi for sky) tablet costs US$41.15; because the Indian government subsidizes units, this brings down the final cost to $35 a piece for students. A commercial version of this for the Indian public will retail for $63, and a higher-end version is expected to sell in the U.S. next year for $79.
Made by DataWind, the first model had been criticized for being underpowered, lacking external speakers, its unresponsive screen and a general feeling of cheapness — plenty of negativity for a well-intentioned low-cost device hoping to change the world. It didn’t help that the government’s role highly politicized the tablet. But now Aakash is hoping to take on naysayers with its latest refresh.
It’s important to note that the advanced copy of Aakash 2 I’m reviewing still has some glitches, but the company plans a major software update that hopefully irons out these kinks before shipping in October.
V2, which is manufactured in India but sources its parts from North America, runs Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich OS (4.0.3) on a 1GHz Cortex A8 processor (a marked improvement from the 366 MHz processor in its predecessor), 4 GB of flash memory (compared with 2GB) and a 3000mAh battery (versus 2100mAh).
The Aakash 2 display has been upgraded from the resistive touch screen to a more responsive capacitive one, which allows for familiar gestures such as swiping and pinching. (Students, have no fear, you can play Angry Birds on this thing.) It’s far from the screen of an iPad, but this isn’t for the iPad clientele, so it gets the job done, even if it isn’t as vibrant or quick to respond. It can also be difficult to press a button if it’s next to another on the screen. While testing the camera (which I’d say is probably comparable to a camera of a pre-iPhone cell), I tried to email the photo to myself, but was stumped because the button didn’t register. The trash button next to it, on the other hand, worked fine.
The Aakash 2 sports a slimmer, more durable frame. In the process, it traded its two USB ports in favor of a single mini USB. It’s still possible to affix an external keyboard, but I suspect the new mini USB port would lessen the possibility. The on-screen keyboard is easy enough to use, but it’d be difficult to churn out research papers on it, especially since there is occasional lag — remember the good old days of typing away on a keyboard, pausing and finally seeing the words show up on the screen?
I was told the Aakash 2 is good for streaming video. Minus the Netflix app crashing, I was able to watch online videos on YouTube without a problem and even found the sound impressive, more so because the first-generation model only had a headphone port.
Image: Alice Truong for Forbes
The Aakash tablets will be first used at colleges, where the government has deployed free WiFi access, so far reaching 1,800 institutions. But the commercial version now includes a SIM card slot. A special agreement with a network operator lets users purchase unlimited data in India for less than $2 (98 Indian rupees) a month. Compound that with the fact that this tablet lets users tether to create portable hotspots (in contrast to the strict telco rules in the U.S.), and you all of a sudden realize this cheap tablet really could bring the Web to the masses. In India, 80 percent of the 1.2 billion population have access to GPRS network coverage. Looking beyond India, this could mean big things if such cheap plans are also available. It’s certainly easier to put up cell phone towers than lay down fiber optic cables, helping overcome the problem of infrastructure in developing countries.
It’s easy to nitpick the specifics, but it’s important to remember the price tag ($35) and the intended audience (a billion Indians and beyond). World changing indeed.
