Marathon, a New Home-Grown Tablet PC
Bangalore-based EAFT Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. launched the MagicTile Marathon on Tuesday, the latest addition to India’s domestically developed tablet space.
The company says the tablet comes with 3G connectivity, WiFi and Bluetooth, uses Android operating system 2.2 (also known as Froyo), and has an eight-hour continuous use battery life.
It has a 10.1″ LCD touchscreen display, a 1.0 Gigahertz processor and 512MB of RAM, which might appear low to users of regular PCs but is pretty standard for tablets. It has a microSD card slot for memory expansion but says storage maxes out at 16GB. The specifications say it also has a 1.3 megapixel camera.
Unlike the iPad, it has a USB port, an HDMI port for an external laptop or TV connection, and supports Flash 10.1.
The MagicTile Marathon tablet this week joined a slew of domestically developed Indian tablets on the market. Above, a screengrab of a video demo of Notion Ink’s Adam tablet.
EAFT’s App store, however, only offers 18 items, one of which is the periodical table of elements while another is an Indian festival calendar; but there are lots of apps out there for Android devices.
It is presently being sold at an introductory offer of 26,990 rupees ($600) but the regular price is 29,990 rupees, which is comparable to the price of the 16B, WiFi-only iPad2 in India.
Other domestic tablets include Bangalore-based Notion Ink’s Adam tablet PC, which began shipping in January. The device seems to be particularly eying gamers, and has a plethora of USB ports – two 2.0 and one mini – an HDMI port, a swivel camera and memory that’s expandable to 128GB. Notion Ink’s founder Rohan Shravan discussed the design during the product development process on their blog, including the challenges of having a movable camera, and incorporated feedback. Adam Hartley wrote about his namesake on Techradar, after spotting it at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
In April, an Engadget review of the device, which overlays its own user interface called Eden on Android 2.2 said Adam was still a work in progress. A version with a newer interface began shipping late last month to Indian customers and overseas and Adam’s developers seem to be in the process of migrating to Honeycomb, or Android 3.0, according to the firm’s blog.
More In tablets
Tech Journal: Is the PlayBook Right for India?
Oh $35 Tablet, Where Art Thou?
Will India's Tablets Trouble iPad?
Why India Isn't Excited About iPad
Earlier this year, HCL Technologies Ltd. came out with its Me tablet. And the Olive Pad, from Olive Telecom, was launched last year and describes itself as India’s first 3G tablet PC. Here is the November review from Living Digital 2.0, as well as a comparison of it and the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which has a much faster processor
Meanwhile, India’s government-backed “$35 tablet,” Sakshat, is still in testing, a government official said last month.
Have you tried out any of the domestic tablets? Share your thoughts on them in the Comments section.
Via: India Real Time
