14 DAY TRIAL // The Aakash tablet is one of the cheapest Android tablets even launched on the market. However, the slate was only intended to reach Indian students, which is why it was priced so cheap in the first place.
The Indian government subsidized most of the tablet's price and Canadian company DataWind was in charge with manufacturing and releasing the Aakash in India.
Unfortunately, something has gone wrong along the way and the original Aakash only reached to a bit more than 300 students, though DataWind had to deliver around 100,000 units.
Earlier this month, DataWind announced the Aakash would finally be released in India, but the company did not unveil exactly when it reaches Indian students and for what price.
Today, the folks over at AndroidOS report Indian president Pranab Mukherjee himself launched the Aakash tablet, at a press event in Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi.
Given the fact the Aakash is tagged as an educational tablet, the press event was attended by lots of teachers across the country via online video conferencing.
The Indian president confirmed the tablet would reach Indian students for a subsidized price of Rs 1,132 ($20/€16).
Unfortunately, we're not sure whether or not the Aakash will indeed be available for purchase for such a low price, so stay tuned for more updates on this one.
Dubbed Aakash 2, this is the second version of the original tablet. The slate comes with slightly improved software and hardware.
Instead of the obsolete Android 2.3 Gingerbread platform, Aakash 2 will be powered by Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system out of the box.
In addition, it will be equipped with a single-core processor clocked at 1 GHz, 512MB of RAM and a 7-inch capacitive touchscreen display.
Last but not least, the Aakash 2 is said to embed a decent battery expected to provide around 4 hours of continuous usage, as well as SIM slot, though the latter has yet to be confirmed by the manufacturer.