Aakash 4 to be available by January 2014, says Kapil Sibal

Despite it being in the news for all the wrong reasons, Minister of Communication and Information Technology Kapil Sibal has announced that the Aakash 4 tablets will be available by January 2014 . This will be the fourth generation of the troubled Aakash series low-cost tablets.

Speaking at the Indian Telecom Summit organised by CIII in Delhi on Friday, Sibal said that he is striving hard to make Aakash a success story. “Yesterday we had meeting on the Aakash. The generation 4 Aakash is ready, all the specifications are frozen,” he added. Sibal has also announced that there are about 12 manufacturers from around the world ready to produce the tablets in India.

Aakash 4 by 2014, says Sibal

“There is no problem in terms of manufacture,” he clarified. “In fact lines are ready for manufacture, what they need is orders. Now that specifications are frozen, we hope that the Aakash will be available to the people of India by January 2014,” he said. Sibal has said that the Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals will start the process for orders soon.

The government announced the specifications for the tablet earlier last month after much deliberation. Aakash 4 will be seeing changes in the hardware side of things which will enable it to dual-boot Android and Linux (through a microSD card). It will have 1GB of DDR3 SDRAM as well as 4GB of internal storage and up to 32GB microSD support. The tablet will have a 7-inch LCD display with 800 x 480 resolution.

The battery on Aakash 4 will last a good 3 hours of 720p video playback according to the specs, and will also go from 10 percent to 80 percent in two hours of charging. The tablet will have Wi-Fi enabled and Internet will be accessible through 2G and 3G SIM cards. Interestingly, the government also wants support for 4G dongles on the Aakash 4 tablet, as well as support of USB On-The-Go on one of the USB ports of the tablet.