The Government of India is reportedly planning to finalise the specifications for the upcoming version of the government aided low-cost tablet PC Aakash.
Department of Electronics and IT (DEITy) Secretary J Satyanarayana told PTI, “The draft of the specifications has been prepared, formally it has to be placed before a committee… We are waiting for a suitable date to do that.”
Though Satyanarayana also mentioned that the said developments will be limited as the department do not want the prices of the tablets to increase much. The low cost subsidized ‘Aakash’ tablet was a brain child of Kapil Sibal and was first rolled out in October 2011.
Speaking further on the subject Satyanarayana said, “Our interest is to finalise the technical specifications at this stage and notify these specifications…Promote domestic manufacturers of such tablets so that electronics manufacturing is given a priority under the electronics policy.”
The specs of the third Aakash UbiSlate 7C+ included:
– ARM Cortex-A8, 1 GHz
– 512 MB
– 4 GB (expandable up to 32 GB)
– 3000 mAh, 3hrs battery time
– Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich
– Wi-Fi + EDGE
– Yes
– 17.7cm (7-inch), 800×480 px capacitive display
– Yes
– launched on 11 November 2012
Hence, we can atleast expect some improvements from the 3rd version.