TD Staff 
Previously MHRD had announced that Aakash 2 Tablet was to be released by January 2012. Now with fresh developments taking place Mr Kapil Sibal, Human Resource Development Minister of India, has now announced that Aakash 2 tablet will now be slated for April 2012 release.
It’s being said that the main reason for delay is to provide Aakash 2 tablet with better functionality than the original Aakash tablet. Aakash tablet was launched by Mr. Kapil Sibal last year amid huge fanfare which was pretty much expected given its extremely low cost, but initial feedback indicated that the users weren’t happy with its low quality.
Rumours are ripe, that conflict of interest has crept between Ministry of Human Resource Development(MHRD) and the manufacturers of Aakash tablet, Datawind, with the MHRD keen on roping in other organisations, IIT Rajasthan and ITI to help them with Aakash 2 tablet. Though Mr. Sibal indirectly admitted that there have been some issues between two parties but also stressed that they would work on resolving issues rather than highlighting them.
“In order to cater to the huge demand, we need several manufacturers to manufacture Aakash. We are enhancing the specifications on the basis of feedback we have received from the first version of Aakash. So we want to make sure that the upgraded product caters to the need of the customers… We have involved ITI in order to upgrade it… We will be able to bring in Aakash-II by April,“said Mr. Sibal, in a press conference help on Monday.
MHRD has fully committed itself to a long term supply of 1 Lakh units of Aakash tablets, as of now around 30,000 Aakash tablets have been already distributed by Datawind. MHRD has declared that the remaining 70,000 units will be upgraded to Aakash 2 before being made available in April.
Specifications of Aakash 2 Tablet :
- Cortex A8 700Mhz
- 256MB memory
- 3200mAh battery, claimed to provide up to 3-4 hours or operation
- 2GB internal memory/with up to 32GB external storage supported
- SIM Slot for using GPRS, as well as Wi-Fi
- Google Android 2.3 Gingerbread Operating System
- Equipped with 2 USB Ports
- In built camera
- 7-inch TFT touch screen
- Drop and shock resistant
- Waterproof
- DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS, XLSX, ODT, ODP, PDF and Text Editor compatible
- PNG, JPG, BMP, GIF Image format supported
- Video Formats including MPEG, MPEG4, FLV, AVI and supports HD video streaming
- JavaScript 1.8, and xHTML 1.1 Web browser compliant
- Phone & SIM functionality
It is being said that Datawind is unhappy with certain test criterion set by IITians such as shock and water resistance, saying it will increase the over all price of the tablet, beating the purpose of developing low cost tablets. MHRD has called for a special meeting between Datawind and IIT Rajasthan to sort the issue out.
Aakash 2 Tablet has been price tagged at INR 2,999. Please note that Aakash Tablet was made available for INR 2500 with students picking up a further INR 1000 discount on purchase. The discount policy for student is most likely to remain same for Aakash 2 Tablet as well.
