If we were to believe Telecom and IT Minister, Kapil Sibal, the Aakash 4 is due to arrive in the market sometime in the month of January, 2014. And as it has been known for a while now, Datawind may not necessarily manufacture the low-budget tablet which is aimed at students.
The delayed delivery of the second generation slate from the series might have contributed to the decision making process. Moreover, a post on The Economic Times has Sibal stating that there are roughly a dozen ‘players’ at present who are willing to craft the device. It seems that the technical specifications have been frozen, but the minister didn’t reveal anything as to what exactly can be expected from the slate.
A little over a month ago the government of India listed out the particulars that it had deemed fit for the Aakash 4 and 4G support through an external dongle happened to be one the key highlights. The slate will be wrapped around a 7-inch display which ought to spew visuals at a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels.
There is quite a chance that version 4.2.1 of Android Jelly Bean is what the slab will be optimized for. Its internal storage capacity will amount to 4GB and further expansion of up to 32GB will be possible through a microSD card slot.
As far as the price of the Aakash 4 is concerned, it still remains a mystery. But keeping the tablet’s target audience in mind, it is bound to fall in the wallet-friendly category as well.