Image Credit: @rajivmakhni

As anticipated earlier, India’s $35 tablet “Aakash” (not Sakshat as rumoured earlier) was officially launched today by the Minister of Communications and Information technology, Kapil Sibal.

Dubbed the cheapest computing device ever launched, this tablet was apparently manufactured by the Canadian company Datawind in Hyderabad.

Kapil Sibal said that the Indian government will buying 100,000 units on a pilot basis at Rs 2250 ($47) and give it to post-secondary students for a discounted price of Rs 1,750 ($35). The Government intends to sell 10 million units at this price point.

Two months down the line i.e. around late November, it will be commercially available under the ‘Ubislate’ moniker with GPRS and a cellular modem, that will retail at Rs 3,000 ($60).

Regarding the features, there were some obvious hardware compromises made to reach this price point. You can expect a 7″ resistive screen, Android 2.2 “Froyo”, two USB ports, 256MB RAM, 2GB onboard flash memory, 2GB Micro SD card which is expandable up to 32GB and HD video playback capability.

It has a 2100 mAh battery life which will offer a decent three hours on average use and 90 to 120 minutes of HD video playback. Also it will feature the GetJar store instead of the Android marketplace.

Connectivity wise, the version launched today is only Wi-Fi enabled but the commercial version, which will be debuting in two months, will have GPRS support.

[Source – NDTV]