Cheap Android Tablets sneak peek

The low cost educational android tablet war is getting crowded in the Indian market. It all started with Akash- India's $35 tablet last year. Then came Ubislate 7+ at a price tag of 3000 INR($60) with 3G support and other features. All this started when the Indian Government decided to start developing tablets for its students.
Here am listing out a few other cheap tablets to be launched this month or in a month.


BSNL's Penta

The latest entrant in the field is the Penta series tablets introduced by BSNL, the state owned telecom carrier.
BSNL has launched three tablets in partnership with Pantel, a Noida-based company. The three new BSNL tablets are Penta TPAD IS701R, Penta TPAD WS704C and Penta TPAD WS802C.  
Out of the 3, Penta TPAD IS701R is the costs the lowest at INR3500($68). The device packs a 17.8-cm (7-inch) resistive touchscreen,800 X 600 resolution, front-facing camera, 1GHz processor and 256 MB RAM running Android gingerbread 2.3, which is expandable up to 32 GB via memory card. 


ATab


ATab is another new device to debut in the low-cost tablet market segment. AcrossWorld Education has launched ATab tablet in India in a tie-up with Delhi-based GoTech.

The ATab Android tablet features a 17.8-cm (7-inch) TFT touchscreen, 1.1 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM with 2 GB built-in memory, expandable up to 32 GB. The device will further support Wi-Fi and an external 3G USB dongle. The company plans to provide a three-year free and unlimited access to AcrossWorld Education's proprietary and revolutionary education technology platform, EducationBridge. Atab will hit the stores in the Indian market in the second week of March at a price point of INR 5,000.  


BizzBook 


Hyderabad-based start-up firm Bizz Group is set to launch six new budget tablets priced between INR 3,200 and INR 12,000 in the second week of March to compete with Aakash tablets.  

The company revealed that BizzBook B7i1 will be in the same league as Aakash tablet, priced at INR 3,200. The new B7i1 tablet will sport a resistive 17.7-cm (7-inch) touchscreen, a 800 Mhz processing speed, Android 2.2 operating system, and a battery that can last from two to four hours. However, additional phone calling will make the device costlier by INR 4,200. The company will also be offering a device matching the specs of Aakash 2 in the coming days. 


ClassPad 


ClassPad tablet is being launched by Mind Shaper Technologies (Classteacher Learning Systems). The device comes with a touchscreen, 1.3 Ghz processing speed, built-in memory of 4 GB, expandable up to 8 GB and 7-hour battery life. 

Classteacher today provides solutions to almost 700 schools and has 80,000 digitised lessons and 50,000 digitised assessment programmes. The ClassPad tablets are priced between INR 6,000 and INR 12,000, depending on the screen size. The high-end version comes with a trolley model size for the students, which comprises 40 tablets within a single trolley to be shared amongst 12 classes in a single day.




AllGo Stamp 


AllGo Slate Tablet, designed and developed by AllGo Embedded Systems. Claims to be the first indigenously designed Android tablet in India, the Stamp tablet is a sub-10K device offered with L2 and L3 level hardware support in the Indian market. 

The Stamp tablet packs a 17.8-cm (7-inch) WVGA LCD display with 800 x 480 pixels resolution, 4 wire resistive touchscreen (but very responsive), ARM9 processor and Android v2.2 OS. Targeted at educational institutions, the device helps students watch course videos and read online eBooks. Available for bulk orders, the AllGo Stamp tablet is approximately priced at INR 8,000 in India. 

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India Launches Worlds Cheapest Android Tablet - Aakash

Android is everywhere, whether its a high end Tablet/smart phone or an entry level smart phone. Today Android gets one more golden mark with world`s cheapest tablet Aakash, launched by Indian government. We have just done a quick review on hardware, features and performance.

To give you a little background, Aakash is cheapest tablet PC launched by Indian government. This tablet is assembled by a British company DataWind. There will be two versions of tablet-

Government version - Aakash, which will cost $45 to government and government will subsidize it to $35 for students
Commercial version - Ubislate,little bit higher than student version and will cost around $50

Technical Specs / Specifications of Aakash version Android tablet

• No GPRS connectivity or camera
• Android 2.2 (Froyo)
• 7-inch resistive touch screen with 800x480 resolution
• weighs 350 gram
• 256 MB of RAM
• 32 GB expandable memory slot
• Two USB ports.
• 12-month replacement warranty
• Doc supports formats DOC, DOCX, PDF and PPTX etc.
• Standard 3.5 mm headphones jack.
• 2100mAh battery (Lasts for 2-3 hours depending on the usage)
• Some pre-loaded apps, however, lacks the Android Market Place.

Ubislate version of Tab will have GPRS & 3G connectivity.

Availability of World`s cheapest Aakash Tablet
Initially 100,000 units will be given to students for free as a part of pilot run from Indian government. The tablet will be commercially available from November for Rs 2999 (appx . $60). The commercial version of the tablet would have no duty waivers or subsidy, as in the government's version and come with added features like an inbuilt cellular modem and SIM to access internet.

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Kindle for Android

The Kindle application for Android phones and tablets enable users to read books on their phones. It includes thousands of free books. The application has got user friendly interface and gives an access to over 950,000 books in Kindle store. It includes popular books, new releases and new York times best sellers starting from  $9.99. It gives free access to news papers, magazines and thousands of free books.

Amazon Whispersync automatically syncs your last page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights across devices (including Kindle), so you can pick up where you left off on another device.


Get the best reading experience available:


• Shop the Kindle Store for over 950,000* Kindle books, including New Releases and 110 of 111 New York Times Best Sellers. Over 610,000* of these books are $9.99 or less, including 73 New York Times Best Sellers.


• Buy, read, and sync over 100 Kindle newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Atlantic, and many more.


• Choose from thousands of free classics, such as Pride and Prejudice or The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.


• Get free book samples – read the first chapter free before you decide to buy.


• Enjoy the benefit of Kindle optimized for Honeycomb tablets; A new library layout, an improved book, newspaper, and magazine reading experience, and dozens of other new enhancements to take advantage of the larger screens.


• Customize your reading experience by choosing the background color, font size, and either portrait or landscape format.


• Instant dictionary word lookup with 250,000 entries and definitions. Tap and hold a word to view the definition. Use the Google and Wikipedia links to get more information.


• Search inside the book to find a character, topic, or section you want to revisit.


• Simply tap on either side of the screen or flick to turn pages.


• Experience seamless integrated Kindle shopping tailored for Honeycomb tablets that gives you quick access to personalized recommendations, customer reviews, and more.


• You can also read your Kindle books on your Kindle, Kindle DX, PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod and BlackBerry. Our Whispersync technology syncs your last page read, notes, bookmarks, and highlights across devices, so you can pick up where you left off.


* Selection and price of books in the Kindle Store may vary by country.



Download


                              Click Here




Screen Shots

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Amazon's 7-Inch Tablet Reportedly $250

It sports a color touchscreen, looks much like a BlackBerry PlayBook, and has no physical buttons on the surface of the device. And it comes at a bargain price.

Yes, reports TechCrunch’s MG Siegler, rumors of Amazon making a full-fledged tablet device are true.

It’s called the Amazon Kindle but is different from other Kindles. Siegler says he actually used the design verification version of the 7-inch tablet, which is due for release at the end of November and will be priced at only $250.

At the competitive price and considering Amazon’s wealth of content, the new device could put a dent in other manufacturers’ tablet sales -- maybe even Apple’s.

Amazon built the operating system on top of some version of Android prior to 2.2, effectively forking Google’s OS to build its own version for the Kindle.

Amazon has deeply integrated its services in this new tablet with a Kindle app for reading books, Amazon’s Cloud Player for music, Amazon’s Instant Video player for watching movies, and Amazon’s Android Appstore (not Google’s Android Market). It also has a Web browser and Google search is set as default.

Siegler believes it runs on a single-core chip and only has 6 GB of internal storage. The initial version of the device will be WiFi-only and has a micro-USB port and speakers, but no camera.

The really big news is the price.

It will compete with the similarly priced Barnes & Noble Nook Color, although Amazon will be sweetening the deal by giving buyers a free subscription to Amazon Prime. The service costs $79 a year and gives users free unlimited two-day shipping, no minimum purchases for free shipping, and access to Amazon’s Instant Video service.

Amazon plans to release a more expensive 10-inch tablet in early 2012 while continuing to sell its existing e-ink-based Kindles alongside the new versions.

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Tablet War Is Heating Up...

Its now the time for tablets. Tablet market is being updated too fast and every leading company is trying to make their mark. If the rate of new tablets being introduced was an effective measure of the tablet market, everyone would have two of the devices already and be shopping for a third. The feverish pace of tablets isn't an indication of the tablet market as a whole, but for the second place, it is.

Just in the past couple of weeks we have seen demand for the HP TouchPad reach Cabbage Patch doll Black Friday levels, Lenovo quietly unveil a sub-$200 tablet, and details emerge about the mythic upcoming Amazon tablet.

The tablet war is in full swing, but there is still no real competition for the iPad

                        

In a matter of less than two months, HP went from launching the TouchPad with grandiose claims of going head to head with the Apple iPad to pulling the plug on the device and getting out of the tablet business entirely. HP simply could not sell the device when priced the same as its Apple iPad 2 rival.

In fact, even with a price drop to $400 few were convinced. When there was a temporary weekend rebate to $300 there was tepid interest, but still not very impressive. But, when HP cleared out the inventory at $99 after killing the tablet it sold them all in a matter of hours.

So, is that it? Is the answer to the tablet war competition to simply race to the bottom and undercut price?

If so, it's game time! Lenovo revealed details of the IdeaPad Tablet A1 this week. The 7-inch tablet is not the greatest or fastest tablet out there, but at $199 it offers enough features and capabilities to at least make a compelling case.

Then, there's Amazon. It has been rumored all year that Amazon is developing its own Android tablet, and many pundits have put their money on Amazon as the tablet competitor finally worthy of going toe to toe with the Apple iPad.

 

Thanks to MG Siegler of TechCrunch, we have a firsthand account of a Kindle tablet pre-production prototype. Siegler says the 7-inch device runs a proprietary Amazon fork of the Android operating system, and is expected to retail at $250. For all of the hype and expectations, though, this device sounds like it is designed to go head to head with the Nook Color 2, not the iPad 2.

amazon kindle

Amazon may sell 5 million of them, but I am not sure it will dent iPad 2 sales. The people who will buy the new Amazon Kindle Android tablet probably already own an iPad. In my house we have an original iPad, and an iPad 2, and a second-generation Kindle, and a third-generation Kindle because the iPad and the Kindle are both great devices that have some minor overlap, but don't directly compete with one another.

The reality is that the iPad has no competition right now. All of these rivals are in a cage match to the death...for second place. They can launch new tablets every other week and have cutthroat price wars with each other. While these tablet competitors "ship" hundreds of thousands or millions of tablets, actual sales are in the thousands--tens of thousands for a "great" tablet.

Meanwhile, analysts estimate that Apple will sell roughly 45 million iPads (including both the original iPad and the iPad 2) in 2011. Not "ship", sell. Apple isn't slashing its price or offering rebates either. Apple can barely produce the tablets fast enough to keep up with demand, while the rest of the tablet field is engaged in a vicious battle for a fraction of the market that represents a drop in the bucket to Apple.

Hoping that the rumored 10-inch model is more tablet and less Kindle, and offers a better rival for the iPad.tablet.

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HP halts WebOS business, WebOS is more popular than ever

What is it about death that makes the once-living so much more appealing?

Take WebOS, the mobile operating system that Hewlett-Packard all-but-ethanized last Thursday. It was a decision born from the fact that HP generated nearly no business for the TouchPad, its iPad-wannabe. And sales of smartphones running WebOS, such as the HP Veer, paled next to rival handsets running Google's Android, as well as Apple's iPhone.

But just after HP announced plans to put WebOS out of its misery, discontinuing operations for devices running on it, the operating system has shown a new luster. TouchPads are flying off the shelves at fire sale prices and WebOS application developers are the subjects of at least one company's hot pursuit. It almost seems as if HP, had it been able to price the TouchPad better and harness the enthusiasm of its developers, could have turned WebOS into a contender.

Just look at what happened this weekend at Best Buy. The giant retailer launched a fire sale on TouchPads over the weekend, selling the model with 16 gigabytes of memory for $99.99, down from $399.99, and the 32-gigabyte version for $149.99, down from $499.99. By Monday morning, Best Buy's online operations were sold out of both gadgets.

Just days earlier, AllThingsD reported that Best Buy was complaining to HP about the mountain of unsold TouchPads taking up too much space in its stores and warehouses. According to that report, the retailer had sold only 25,000 of the 270,000 TouchPads it had received.

And it's not just Best Buy. Over the weekend, the discounted devices became the hottest-selling electronics items on Amazon. And even HP's site selling TouchPads at fire-sale prices cratered under the rush of interest, according to a story from CNET's sister site, ZDNet.

Add to that the WebOS sideshow rolling in Redmond, Wash. On Friday, Microsoft's director of developer experience for Windows Phone, Brandon Watson, made a play for WebOS developers. Watson tweeted that Microsoft would provide free phones, developer tools, and training to help any published WebOS developers make the switch to Windows Phone.

By Monday morning, Watson tweeted that he'd received close to 1,000 e-mails from WebOS developers. (Which raises the question: are there really 1,000 WebOS developers?) In an e-mail sent to those developers, Watson expressed surprise at the level of interest in his offer, according to Winrumors, which obtained the note.

"To be honest, we didn't expect this level of response, so we were caught a bit flatfooted," Watson wrote.

Of course, so was HP, when it acquired Palm and WebOS with it. As WebOS moves closer to the great beyond, you can't help but think that it's a bit like James Dean, loved more in death than in life. Or maybe it's a bit more like the old AMC Pacer, popular but only in an ironic sort of way.

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