It has always been said that a country’s future rests on its children. And with that in mind, India’s government is doing everything they can to give the younger generation an edge, including subsidizing tablets for students.
A very affordable tablet from Datawind, the Aakash 2, was recently rolled-out during celebrations of India’s National Education Day. It’s basically an upgrade of the original Aakash tablet that first came to light last year. The older version of the tablet was touted as the cheapest in the world, with a price tag that came somewhere around $35 when sponsored by India’s government.
But the cheap price also meant very meagre pickings when it comes to features, like a 7” 800 x 480 screen resolution, 256 MB of RAM and a 32 GB memory. Of course, UK based Datawind is touting that while the new Aakash 2 is significantly better than the original, it is still very affordable. The tablet now boasts of running on the Android 4 system, a 1 GHz A8 Cortex processor, 512 MB RAM, a memory of 4GB and a four hour battery life. The screen is still 7” but there’s no word regarding its resolution, although chances are it has remained at 800 x 480.
The specs won’t be able to compete with most of the tablets out in the market today, but it’s still enough to help students with their tasks. India’s students can get the Aakash 2 tablet will be sold in india for $41 (BHD 15) subsidy per tablet that the Ministry of Human Resource Development of India will shoulder. The Aakash 2 is priced at $64 (BHD 25) on the world market.