Aakash 4 will be launched in January 2014

The fourth generation of Indian government’s ambitious low-cost tablet project, the Aakash 4, will be launched in January 2014, according to a report. The report quotes Communication and Information Technology minister Kapil Sibal, who was speaking at the Indian Telecom Summit organised by the CIII in the Capital. He acknowledged the problems related to the project and said “I am battling for success of Aakash. It has been my dream to make Aakash a success story.”

So far the Government of India has outlined the specs for the next Aakash tablet. The outlines dictate that a display of a minimum resolution of 800x480 pixels must be implemented, with a 5-point multitouch panel. The tablets are also required to run Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean at the least. Currently, the latest version of Android is 4.3 Jelly Bean.

The Government is also demanding the tablets to be dual-bootable through the external microSD card slot so that it can run Ubuntu as well. A minimum of 1GB of DDR3 RAM is specified to ensure a fluid user experience and the tablets will have a minimum of 4GB of internal memory, and a microSD card slot that supports up to 32GB of storage.

Other frills specified include WiFi (b/g/n), Bluetooth 2.1 or higher versions, a 3.5 mm jack, USB port and it should support all popular 2G/3G/4G phone/data connectivity dongles in India, USB to Ethernet adaptors, USB printers, mouse, and a keyboard. In addition to this, the SD card reader is also required to support NFC based SD cards.