Skip to main content

Datawind to Launch £29 UbiSlate Tablet in the UK

Tablets have been getting remarkably cheap here in the US with price of a decent tablet dropping to below $90, but Datawind thinks they can take it a step further. They’ve just announced plans to release a new Ubislate tablet in the UK market, and they are promising that it will cost under $50 USD.

aakash[1]

Datawind is a name that should be familiar to anyone following tablet or ed-tech news. They are the hardware partner for India’s Aakash tablet project. This is India’s ongoing effort to offer a subsidized tablet to Indian students, and it has had varying degrees of success.

Datawind CEO Suneet Tuli was speaking at Wired’s 2013 London event this week when he revealed that Datawind will soon be bringing 4 different Aakash tablets to the UK. They had been selling these tablets in India under the brand name UbiSlate, and later this year the tablets will be available to UK buyers.

But will anyone want to buy these tablets?

The  £29 tablet doesn’t strike me as a compelling buy. Techcrunch identifies it as the UbiSlate 7Ci, and it doesn’t have very impressive specs. According to the product page it runs Android 4.0.3 on a single-core 1Ghz CPU with 512MB RAM and 4GB of storage.

It’s also going to have Wifi, a VGA webcam, a g-sensor, and 3 hours of battery life. Those are unimpressive specs, even for that price, and this tablet also got unspectacular reviews.

Datawind is also going to be selling their more expensive tablets in the UK with prices ranging up to £99.99 for the UbiSlate 3G7. They will also release  the upcoming Aakash4 tablet in the UK as the UbiSlate 7CZ. That tablet will ship with a dual-core 1GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, and a pair of cameras. I don’t have details on the UK price but in India this tablet is listed for 5,999 rupees, or about $98.

The specs for the 7CZ suggest that it could rank in about the same class as the Hisense Sero 7, Ematic EM63, and the Nextbook 7GP, but it costs a little more.

Those are three $90 tablets with dual-core CPUs, a decent screen resolution, and an all around adequate build quality. If the UbiSlate tablets were available in the US these are the tablets that Datawind would have to beat.

Techcrunch

Similar Articles


Comments


Nigel October 31, 2013 um 3:50 pm

For the price I don’t see any problem with the spec – a basic tablet at a basic price for basic use!
But the price of £29.99 is only achievable if you collect from the suppliers.
Otherwise add-on £9.99 for delivery !


Write a Comment