The Indian Dream Tablet

You must surely remember the Rs.1500 Indian laptop/tablet for students that was announced with much fanfare by the HRD ministry more than a month back. At first, the tech community was rightfully skeptical, anyone would doubt such claims, after the Rs.500 laptop debacle which had shamed the Indian Govt before. "In 2011, the Sun, will rise for the children of India”, proclaimed HRD Minister, Kapil Sibal at the launch of the tablet. The minister has also promised that million of units of the laptop/tablet will be produced soon though there was no fixed date as to when it would be unveiled in the retail market.

A company called HiVision had shown off a new Android tablet at this years CeBIT, and whilst the specifications aren’t all that impressive, the price is as the company expects to sell their new Android tablet for under $100. So what do you get for your $100?

The HiVision SpeedPad features a Samsung 6410, 800MHz (ARM 11) processor, 2GB of storage and 256MB of DDR 2 RAM, there is also integrated 802.11 b/g WiFi. Other specifications include support for external 3G, Bluetooth, GPS connections via USB, and it will come with a range of software built in which will include a web browser, email, Google Maps, a clock, camera, video camera and messaging.

It looks like the HiVision SpeedPad will give you around six hours of usage on the built in 4200mAh battery, not bad for under $100, there are no details as yet on when it will hit the stores though.

Apparently, the HRD ministry was just planning to buy the tablets from China in bulk, subsidize them to reach the $35 target price and was hoping that no one would notice. The contract awarded to HCL was just for testing the tablets, not for manufacturing them!

Hope this sees the light of the day though - because, the product is well worth it - whatever the source!

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