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There are more than a few “cheap” Android tablets available in my country, India, where by and large price is one of the most important factors when it comes to purchasing gadgets. After all, we’re the country of the $35 Aakash tablet, which is revered by quite a lot of people (personally, I’m quite a bit against the Aakash, but that discussion is for another time).
As you would expect, the quality of these tablets is pretty awful, but I believe that the Funbook, a $125 Ice Cream Sandwich tablet released by Micromax, will sell like hotcakes here.
Despite being barely known abroad, Micromax is one of the most exciting mobile manufacturers over here. The reason is that they have gained significant market share over the past two years, and the biggest loser in their blaze of glory is Nokia, who had up till quite recently been ubiquitous with mobile phones in India and other South Asian countries.
Though there were several other cheap handset makes, what set Micromax apart was their build quality. When you buy a Micromax, you aren’t buying something clunky. Yes, the internal hardware is still poor, but that’s expected. And thanks to this, Micromax has built a decent reputation for itself.
For this reason, I’m actually excited to see them enter the tablet realm. At Rs 6499, I won’t be surprised if I see a lot more tablets everywhere I go by the end of the summer. People are excited by tablets here, and they’ve finally gotten one priced low enough and from a brand that isn’t synonymous with junk.
As expected, the hardware isn’t great. There’s a single core 1.2 GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor coupled with a Dual Mali 400 GPU and 512 MB RAM, only 4 GB of on board memory, and a battery life of (up to 5 hours of browsing), but these specs don’t matter here at all. What are their killer features? A 7 inch capacitive touch screen, accelerometer, and, most importantly, a USB port with the capability to host an internet dongle that comes with it (giving the user 3G data capability).
And the personal highlight for me? It’s made in India. I love the sound of that.
[Micromax]
lol India is definitely trying to get every person in the country to be technological advanced, because most of the price is government funded… Kudos to them
Micromax isn’t Government funder (at least not over the table)
Oh, maybe I’m thinking of that $35 tablet? Lol
You are lol
You haven’t seen India my friend… They are in some serious turmoil with tradition and modernizing, and lemme tell you… No one is winning the fight. Check it out for yourself sometime…
Wait are you saying that micromax phones actually have a good build quality? The one’s I have used in the UAE are horrendous and were still using Resistive screens and not just any resistive ones, the worst that had the screen flexing in order to operate! India makes a bunch of things in house but we are seriously FAR from reaching the level some of our asian counterparts are at, the only reason people buy “made in India” products (phones, other electronics, cars) is the tax thrown into the mix on imported brands, even when they (imports) have a established centre in the region the price added on top makes local products a far more reasonable buy.
the build quality is decent for its price, and taxing imports significantly helps create more jobs in the country when manufacturers develop their parts over here.
I have seen samsung touchscreens phones way cheaper with capacitive screen. Taxing imports to get more jobs is the most bizarre excuse I have heard, that 35 usd tab would have been made inhouse if that were true especially since the govt had full control there, either ways lets not get into politics. Have you not noticed videocon being the worst out of the lot (if it still exits) when compared to hitachi/samsung/lg tvs priced in the same ball park ? India is a place ready to feed even the worst products simply because people would have no choice or don’t know better, nothing to do from a price point. Since the margin from another product can be huge, why would they even bother spending more money on quality where they can maximise on profits? There is a reason videocon did real bad against the japanese big boys, build quality was shit but price was similar. Corruption is affecting the world and definitely killing us Indians, fact!
Raveesh, assembled in India is more appropriate since most of the electronic components come from East Asia.