15 December 2012

Aakash 2 Performance

Remember the Aakash 2 tablet ? The cheap $20 Indian tablet ? Now there is a preview of it from Think Digit. Is it any good ?

Does It Feel Good In The Hand? 
So, what do you get for $40? Not much, but c'mon. 
This isn't an off-the-shelf Chinese Android tablet, although it's indistinguishable from some of the models you'd find in a shopping mall in Shenzhen. According to Tuli, the processor is Chinese, the touch screen is made in India and the tablet is finally assembled and programmed in India. 
The Ubislate 7ci is a dull slate gray, about the size of the original Amazon Kindle Fire . It has a plastic screen and a gray plastic back. Turn it on, and the low-quality 800-by-480 LCD lights up. This thing doesn't have a viewing angle as much as a viewing point, and the touch screen takes some noticeable pressure to activate. 
There's a VGA camera right above the screen on the front, and a microSD card slot (labeled "TF slot" for TransFlash, an old name for MicroSD) adorns the back. The tablet has about 2.6GB of free internal memory divided into two partitions. Wi-Fi 2.4Ghz networking is on board, but no Bluetooth; the cellular model will have GPS. The Ubislate runs stock Android 4.0.4 with the basic apps, adding Google Play, Gmail, and a proprietary media player. The Ubisoft browser didn't come on my unit, but it'll be on the models sold in India. Singh said to consider this a fully open-source tablet, hackable by any Indian who wants to develop software for it. 
I ran our benchmarks on the tablet, and the good news is, the benchmarks run. The bad news is that as expected, they run slowly. The Ubislate 7ci has a 1Ghz AllWinner Cortex-A8 processor, so functions like an entry-level smartphone. Scrolling can be laggy and sometimes screen transitions are slow. The browser was also really slow, even over Wi-Fi. Most notably, though, all the usual apps run: the Web browser, email, games. In other words, if it's this or no Internet, this will get you on the Internet. 
Source: Think Digit

As expected, the Aakash 2 tablet is not for the mainstream market. It is more of a means to connect to the internet for cheap. A PC or laptop is not affordable for most India household, so a tablet make sense. It is also heavily subsidized by the Indian government. What do you think ?

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