14 DAY TRIAL // The original Aakash was both loved and hated, and we guess that the same may happen to the Aakash 2, though perhaps with a higher share of the former compared to the latter.
Aakash is the name that the Indian Government gave to the ARM-powered Ubislate, developed by DataWind and loaded with Android.
Intended as a learning supplement for students, the small 7-inch tablet was praised for its low price of $35 / 27 Euro and harshly criticized for its low performance.
DataWind didn't take kindly to that last part, arguing that the performance per price was actually high, and that everyone was free to make a better one if they thought they could.
Nevertheless, the company took some of the criticism into account and put together a new tablet, called Aakash 2.
For a time, it was believed that Aakash 2, or Ubislate 7+, would cost a bit more than its predecessor, $40 / 30.59.
It turns out that this is not the case. DataWind's product will sell for the same amount as the first: $35 / 27 Euro (INR 2000).
So now we may as well say what the 7-inch item is made of. An LCD with capacitive touch support hides an ARM Cortex-A8 processor, whose frequency is of 1 GHz.
512 MB of RAM (random access memory) backs up the CPU, while files can be stored on the 4 GB of NAND Flash storage.
There is a SIM card slot too (for phone capabilities), and a microSD card slot will permit extra storage space to be added. This is an especially good thing, as the Android operating system already takes up some of the built-in 4GB.
Speaking of which, DataWind fully intends to update Aakash to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, but will initially ship it with Gingerbread (Android 2.3). Deliveries will begin in mid-October (2012), when Aakash turns 1 year old.