Slashdot Mirror
India's $20 Android Tablet First Project Completed
symbolset writes "Though there were some troubles and worries along the way, Datawind has delivered to India's government the full allocation of 100,000 (1 lakh) 'Aakash 2' Android tablets from their first order. Priced at about $40, these tablets aren't the sort Americans would rave about: 330 MHz, 256MB RAM and so on. But for the last 2,000 units for the same price Datawind supplied Aakash 3 1GHz, 1GB RAM, 4GB Android tablets with SDHC and 3G mobile — for the same price. Such is the progress in mobile today. There was some doubt whether Datawind could deliver, so kudos to them."
$40 != $20
What's the deal?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I think the first batches were just loss leaders, the commercial versions you can order on their web site are about twice as much as the contracted prices to the government.
That's not big enough to cache my HOSTS file. Thanks but no thanks!
Does anyone have a list of the small cheap, sub $50 computers that governments in the developing world have purchased or had designed in the last 10 years or so? I've always thought it was an interesting idea for the purposes of education. How effective are they really at reaching the poorest people in the world and how useful are they as educational tools? How widespread are wi-fi networks in India, for example? And, has anybody got their hands on any of these devices? What are they like?
What does that make Wind River then?
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Honestly, I just bought a 7-inch Android tablet from AliExpress that outperforms even their new improved specs and is sturdily built with good touch response (actually to my great surprise). It cost me $50 for just a single unit, delivered to my door.
Not adding a link for fear of advertising, but you find them easily enough, on AliExpress and also elsewhere.
Dunno, but you might want to change your shorts.
It cost me $50 for just a single unit....
That costs over double the device in the article, whatever the specification; in the market they are aiming for price is everything. That said the specifications do seem a too low for useful Android. I think they should a price against sensible specifications, but then I think the same for similar projects like the raspberry pi.
was it for the same price?
In about 5-7 years is a pair of tablets. Each 12", a 12"x11" version of the galaxy note 10.1, the other a 12" version ( with similar aspect ratio ) of the Nexus 10.
With swappable battery packs. ( Cell phones used to have swappable battery packs until around the time of the Iphone I wonder why people tolerate the lack of them ). For $200.
In that time I expect that this can easily met but the thing that will cause that is projects like this.
So is every Windows laden Dell computer we ever put at a school, but never stopped us either.