India’s very own Aakash 2 tablet, which is scheduled to go on sale in a couple of weeks time from now will be upgraded to Google Android’s latest OS, Android 4.0/ Ice Cream Sandwich, as announced by Datawind, the Canadian manufacturer of the tablet. The tablet, however will primarily be shipped with Android version 2.3 (Gingerbread), but will be upped to ICS in six to eight weeks after the sales start. "
Coming soon to Aakash 2
The product development is complete and deliveries are expected to start for Aakash 2 in about two or three weeks," Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of Datawind said in an e-mail. The Aakash 2 Tablet will have 2GB flash storage, an 800Mhz processor and a 256 MB RAM, wherein both of the above mentioned system requirements are below the recommended ones put forward by Google for their Ice Cream Sandwich to work fine. Google, themselves have not upgraded their developer phone Nexus One which has a 1GHz processor and a 512 MB RAM.
The Aakash 2 is a significant upgrade over the original Aakash tablet. The initial version of the tablet had a 7-inch resistive touchscreen, which reportedly failed to even respond to the touch on its screen. It ran Android 2.2 and a slower 366MHz processor, based on an older ARM architecture. The Aakash 2 Tablet is likely to be replaced by a new successor, which will have a dual-core Cortex - A9 processor by this year end, which is being used by most of the tablets now i.e. Samsung, ASUS, Acer and Lenovo. "We're confident that by the fall, Cortex A9 dual-core processors will be in the same [price] range as what Cortex A8 is at today," Tuli said.
If Datawind can pull off this feat of running Ice Cream Sandwich smoothly on their tablets, then it most definitely would be something that other manufacturers would need to take notes from and try to give out updates for their mid-budget phones that use 800 MHz or more. The developer community has been able to flash an Ice Cream Sandwich ROM built completely from scratch for Samsung Galaxy Ace, which runs at 800MHz too just like the Aakash 2 tablet. If the developer community can pull it off by creating ROMs in their free time, then why not employees.
Coming soon to Aakash 2
The product development is complete and deliveries are expected to start for Aakash 2 in about two or three weeks," Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of Datawind said in an e-mail. The Aakash 2 Tablet will have 2GB flash storage, an 800Mhz processor and a 256 MB RAM, wherein both of the above mentioned system requirements are below the recommended ones put forward by Google for their Ice Cream Sandwich to work fine. Google, themselves have not upgraded their developer phone Nexus One which has a 1GHz processor and a 512 MB RAM.
The Aakash 2 is a significant upgrade over the original Aakash tablet. The initial version of the tablet had a 7-inch resistive touchscreen, which reportedly failed to even respond to the touch on its screen. It ran Android 2.2 and a slower 366MHz processor, based on an older ARM architecture. The Aakash 2 Tablet is likely to be replaced by a new successor, which will have a dual-core Cortex - A9 processor by this year end, which is being used by most of the tablets now i.e. Samsung, ASUS, Acer and Lenovo. "We're confident that by the fall, Cortex A9 dual-core processors will be in the same [price] range as what Cortex A8 is at today," Tuli said.
If Datawind can pull off this feat of running Ice Cream Sandwich smoothly on their tablets, then it most definitely would be something that other manufacturers would need to take notes from and try to give out updates for their mid-budget phones that use 800 MHz or more. The developer community has been able to flash an Ice Cream Sandwich ROM built completely from scratch for Samsung Galaxy Ace, which runs at 800MHz too just like the Aakash 2 tablet. If the developer community can pull it off by creating ROMs in their free time, then why not employees.
