It was first announced in August, but is going to finally hit the stores this week, becoming only the second device in India. We are talking of India’s first 3.5G tablet, the OlivePad VT-100 from Olive Telecom, which grabbed a lot of media attention a few months ago and then kind of faded away to the background as consumers twiddled their thumbs waiting for it to arrive in stores. Arun K Khanna, Chairman, Olive Telecommunications, told us that the delay was caused because Google had requested that the OlivePad be released only on the latest version of Android, 2.2, also known as Froyo.”We were ready to release the product running Android 2.1, but decided it would be better to give the consumer an up-to-date product, rather than having them running around trying to get updates later,” he told us.
Well, the tablet is well and truly out of the bag now and is expected to hit leading electronic stores this week at a price tag of Rs 25,990. Not too terrible a deal if one considers that it supports 3.5G networks (you can just pop your sim into it and use it as a phone too), has every sort of connectivity option on board, has a 7 inch capacitive touch screen, and sports a VERY decent 3.0 MP camera and another VGA one for video calling. Yes, there will be some quaking about the price, the less than impressive sounding 600 MHz ARM processor and the rather modest 800 x 400 resolution, but heck, it is not a dishonorable price for getting a Froyo device, especially considering that the other, the HTC Desire, costs a bit more at around Rs 27,000.
