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."

Datawind...

[Zemran]

sounds like a statistical fart

Re:

[lobiusmoop]

What does that make Wind River [wikipedia.org] then?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno, but you might want to change your shorts.

Captain Obvious to the rescue

[mwvdlee]

$40 != $20
What's the deal?

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[gl4ss]

$40 != $20
What's the deal?

bullshitting your clients. so they sent better units in the last batch as to not sound like total dataswindlers.

Re:

[Brucelet]

That's datawinders, actually.

Re:Captain Obvious to the rescue

[Anonymous Coward]

$40 retail, $20 subsidized

Re:Captain Obvious to the rescue

[Anonymous Coward]

Sasha Segan at PCMag reported last November that the Indian government was paying for half of the then estimated $40.41 per unit cost.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412642,00.asp

Re:

[PolygamousRanchKid]

What's the deal?

It's just like any other IT project. At the beginning, they tell you it will only cost you $20. By the end, you have spent $40.

Be happy that it doesn't cost you $400 . . .

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Go look at Aliexpress.com. You can get much better spec'd tablets for less than $10 each in lots of 1,000.

Re:

[unrtst]

I don't trust any site whose product descriptions don't match the product specifications.

Ex: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2013-New-4rd-Generation-16GB-Black/891966448.html [aliexpress.com]
"2013 New 4rd Generation- 16GB - Black"
Tablet Data Capacity: 32GB

Same thing for: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2013-New-Iconia-Tab-A210-10g16u-10-1-Inch-16GB-Tablet-Gray/891858062.html [aliexpress.com]
2013 New Iconia Tab A210-10g16u 10.1-Inch 16GB Tablet (Gray)
Tablet Data Capacity: 32GB .... title says 16GB; iconia a210 normally ships with 16GB
Net

Re:

[PRMan]

It's India. $20 for the tablet and $20 for the bribe...

Loss leader

[robpow]

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.

only 1 GB of RAM?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not big enough to cache my HOSTS file. Thanks but no thanks!

List

[puddingebola]

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?

Not impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Then maybe you should be.

[tuppe666]

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.

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[loufoque]

The raspberry pi costs about $50 and is even less powerful than the least powerful of the tablets above. (and it doesn't even have a screen or input device)

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[K. S. Kyosuke]

More like $35, isn't it? And that's for the more expensive model with more peripheral units, the cheaper one has the same performance. And it's built in the UK, you can't expect that to be that much cheaper.

Re:

[loufoque]

I just went to the official website selling them.
The board + a case + a power plug + a SD card = 64 euros (VAT included), which is 84 dollars.
That's without delivery fees of course.

The board alone seems to be about 36 dollars without VAT.

but

[jjeffries]

was it for the same price?

What I would like

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

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.

Re:

[jon3k]

So is every Windows laden Dell computer we ever put at a school, but never stopped us either.