The hoopla of the cheapest ever tablet made in India began about a year ago. God forgive me for being so naïve that I believed that this 7” Android 2.3 will change the way technology is accepted in my country when it was all a little dirty prank. The technology is marvelous for having produced this technical gem in less than Rs. 3000. But in India, every research in brilliant and its only when it is applied that it leads to a fiasco. Aakash, or the Ubislate as it is commercially known, has lost its shine in all the controversies and blame games played by the government, IIT Rajasthan, Datawind and Quad Electronic. Amongst the 1000 tablets that were to be distributed by the government to students, less than 400 have reached their fate and consumers who had placed their orders with a full advance in December 2011 and January 2012 are yet to receive their devices – both Ubislate and Ubislate 7+. Datawind doesn’t seem satisfied with all the public criticism about lack of transparency in their systems. So, they’re now coming up with the new 7C series. As per information let out on their official website, both Ubislate 7+ and Ubislate 7C series will have similar features apart from display quality and internal storage. Priced at Rs. 2,999, the UbiSlate 7+ is powered by a Cortex A8 – 800MHz processor and runs smoothly on Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS. There’s a 7-inch resistive touch screen with a resolution of 800×400 pixels. The device also offers Wi-Fi and GPRS connectivity for anytime internet access and phone functionality. Elective 3G modems are also supported. In addition to a micro-SD card slot, a full sized USB port is also integrated into the UbiSlate 7+. The UbiSlate 7C, priced at Rs. 3,999, comes with same set of applications as UbiSlate 7+ except for the capacitive four-point touch screen and 4GB internal storage that it features. It’s time that it should be made known to all parties concerned that giving exciting new add-ons to Aakash will not increase hype for the product. The rage will only be intensified for customers who have made their payments in full and are yet to receive the older version of the tablet that they had booked. But it seems like only a matter of time now that the true fate of Aakash is known.
