Thursday, July 11, 2013

213 - Govt proposes decent features for Akash IV

July 02, 2013 18:17 IST

The Indian government is working hard and trying to push ahead the plans for an improved low-priced Aakash tablet device for students. The project which has always been under the scanner and mired with several controversies is being tried to reinvigorated.

The key specs of the much-talked-about Android-based Aakash IV tablet can be found on the web sites of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) and Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) .

The device comes with a seven inch screen and should be not weigh more than 500g. It is 0.75 in thickness and comes with a minimum of 1 GB DDR3 SDRAM. It also carries at-least 4GB of in-built memory, which can be further expanded up to 32GB, with the help of a Micro SD card.


The battery capacity of the device is enough to provide upto 3 hours of video playback and almost 5 hours of web browsing.

Browser-wise it requires HTML5 support. The default language of the tablet will be English, while support for other languages like Hindi, Punjabi and Tamil is a must. There is also a requirement for learning tools like Keyboard, USB, mouse, and support for all data dongles."Hardware accelerator should be capable of supporting OpenGL ES 2.0 playing true HD720p with at least 30fps," a notification given out by the government said.

Talking about connectivity features, it will come with WiFi (b/g/n), 3.5 mm jack, Bluetooth 2.1 or higher version and USB port. "SD Card interface should support NFC based SD card," the notification further added. What has come as a heavy blow to Datawind, which manufactured the first two versions of the Aakash tablet, the government said that it is yet to decide who would be the next to awarded the contract this time.