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Creating the World's Cheapest Tablet
Back in October, we discussed news that India had launched a $35 tablet. Now, JohnWiney writes with a story in the Globe and Mail about the device's development. Quoting:
"Part of the difficulty in engineering such a device is that the underlying goal—that its final price should be within the means of those who can’t afford high-priced tablets—dictates crucial engineering and component decisions. A piece of high-impact-resistant glass, such as the touchscreen face of an iPad, can cost upward of $20. Datawind’s touchscreen glass, which the company had engineered down the street, costs less than $2, though it won’t allow for luxuries like pinch-and-zoom finger swiping. There were also compromises on processing power: Datawind’s 366 megahertz processor costs less than $5, a fraction of the $15-plus price tag on the chips that power iPads and other comparable tablets. And while the decision to run Google’s free Android mobile operating system on the gadget saves money, it requires coders to dig deep into the Linux kernel that underpins the software, tweaking it until it runs smoothly on Datawind’s weaker processor."
Unfortunately, a race to the bottom will always result in a lower-quality experience. It doesn't seem worth it for the compromises made. Amusingly, devices like this get figured into the amorphous statistic of "Android marketshare" in countless forum operating system arguments.
"Sufferin' succotash."
It it is imho a basic human right to compute, now a lot more people can.
Ha. You old people are so funny. You could never do anything real on a 366 MHz processor. I mean, like, the Android I got for christmas has at LEAST 1200 megahertzes. I bet they had at least that when they went to that moon or invented the awesome SR-71.
Who are these indian kids that would even get this. I would be soooo mad if someone got me this for christmas. Such a horrible gift. No one could ever even use it.
Let them have the original iPhone.
I think the benefit of such undertakings - creating the lowest costing item - is usually that some of the ideas that come out of it can be used by other companies to bring down the price of the device in general. Ofcourse, if they hit upon a radical way of making tablets cheaper yayy. Otherwise, if at least some of their ideas can incorporated to make things cheaper and more accessible to other parts of the world as well, then thats the biggest victory for them.
Lord knows I have a million and one uses for cheap tablets. I could stick them to the back of the seats in the car, to shut up the kids in a long road trip. Stick one to my dashboard and connect it to a bluetooth ODB-II dongle. I would stick one to the front of the fridge to turn it into a new smart fridge. Hell, duct tape them to anything to smarten it up.
It would also make a hella good universal remote for the lounge.
Problem is now that tablets are spiffy high price gadgets with premium hardware and spiffy graphics that cost the same as a entry level laptop. I'd have one tablet to do all those things and have to carry it with me. Things will change radically when tablets really do become as cheap as they should be. Cheap enough and we'll start covering surfaces with them.
All the interface animations and physical metaphor graphics (brushed metal, wood grain - Apple's microsoft bob era design philosophy), but after a while it's no benefit and a small waste of your time and battery power every time you watch a 500ms transition animation. They just get in the way and in the end I'd rather have more battery life/response/cheaper hardware.
I really cannot wait to get my hands on a useful $99 or less tablet that actually doesn't look good, is rugged and doesn't have fancy graphics.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Currently there are ARM Cortex A8 tablets with 7" LCD's using the $5.00 Allwinner A10 ARM soc on sale for ~120ea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCvef9IYX0o
http://tabletrepublic.com/forum/cortex-a8-allwinner-a10/
The actual cost to build them is around $60 ea
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If they can make the thing dirt and water resistant (almost essential, and ideally even waterproof, in the humid Indian climate), I would say it's a better solution for India than books and paper. Some of the OLPC ideas for making it cheap, robust and usable would be beneficial. Books may cost as much as several days pay for an average poor Indian just for the printing. If a single 'book' can be downloaded 100,000,000 times to simple tablets, it's much cheaper than printing the necessary books to educate 100,000,000 students for, say eight years. I would estimate that counting distribution and other factors, a tablet is probably cheaper after the first year.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
What you call, "The Race to the Bottom," is in fact an essential link to making the Scale of Economy as rapidly effective as possible. Were you under some delusion that the original Apple computer was cutting edge from the then modern mini-computer perspective? Did you think the Motorola flip phones of the mid-nineties were the best cellular communications device available? There is a significant advantage, even without government subsidies to make things affordable to the poorer portions of the spectrum, to creating a basic experience as cheaply as possible.
Today's pre-data-plan-required phones are five times more powerful than my first computer and a quarter the cost without adjusting for inflation, and that is available thanks to what you have titled, "Race to the bottom [sic]." Whatever moderator thought you were insightful must have the understanding of Economics and technology development cycles as 1/3rd of the US Congress.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
Duh! Cheaper stuff is not as good as expensive stuff (most of the time). I have an old dumb phone, that is not as good as a new powerful smartphone. Is my "experience" lower quality than it would be with a brand new i-phone or something similar? Sure it is. Am I willing to pay my phone company the money they charge for such new phone, plus data plan? Hell no! It's simply not worth to me, and I know better way to spend my money. Another example: when I go backpacking, could I spend few thousand dollars on gear that would keep me dryer, warmer, safer, etc? Sure. Would it improve my experience? Actually, no, I would be to worried about all the expensive stuff to really enjoy being in the woods. Is my old jacket, backpack, banded pot and old fire making kit as good as all the new expensive stuff? No, they are not, but they are good enough for me, I know them, I know I can rely on them, and if I happen to loose some of them in the woods, it's no big deal, I can get another one just like that very cheap.
What I am trying to say, there is use for expensive, carefully designed stuff that will give you "high-quality experience", and there is place for cheap, rugged, "inferior" stuff. The problem with tablets is, right now there is no choice, you either have the expensive stuff, or you have nothing. Creating something that will give us choice cannot be bad.
One of the advantages of systems like Android is that it makes devices like this possible, so it is perfectly right that they get counted.
AccountKiller
Why are they stuck in poverty?
Sure, part of it is the lack of resources.
But another huge part is lack of information.
Moreover, your talk about them getting information from their neighbors? Many/most of them live in villages where the neighbors don't have a phone, even if they do.
You don't have to have a cutting edge communications device to benefit from a communications device. Calculation and informations storage and retrieval are additional benefits.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.