The Wise Touch tablet claims to be Africa’s first locally designed and developed tablet set to beat the Apple’s iPad, given its wholly customised local content.
Originally manufactured in China, the Wise Touch tablets are branded and customised by the Wise Touch firm, with contents on local education, shopping and entertainment content.
The first batch of Wise Touch 1 were launched in late February in South Africa and are available in 7- and 9-inch formats with capacitive multi-touch, running on Android 2.3.
Wise Touch says they wanted to be different from the hardware and software tablet players who had the offering in the market. They therefore developed local content for the tabs to have an African feel.
“We found that none of the tablets in the market, including the Apple iPad, present any form of local content,” the firm’s managing director Gian Shipton said.
Shipton says the content on the new tablets will be what sets them apart.
What makes the Wise Touch SA’s first South African tablet is what’s on the inside, Shipton says.
The tablet enables easy access to information, education, e-commerce and communication with each other and the world.
The tablet comes with Android 2.3, Capacitive Multi-touch screen with a selection of 7″; 8″; 9″ & 10″ sizes, HD display, Long-life battery and all the Bells & Whistles to be expected from a world-class tablet.
It also allows one to take photos and view them in the gallery, record and watch videos as well as listen to music with the pre-loaded music player and tune-in radio app.
The Wise Touch tablet’s language, date and time settings are configured for use in South Africa beforehand.
The tablet also comes with pre-loaded games or downloads some from the Android Market with instant access to websites, e-mail, instant messaging and the social networking apps such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
The 9-inch tablet will retail for less than R3,500, while the 7-inch 3G tablet will go for less than R2,500. The entry-level 7-inch WiFi tablet will go for less than R1 500.
The 7-inch 3G tablet will retail for R2 500 ($306) and the entry-level seven-inch Wi-Fi version will cost less than R1 500 ($184), according to reports. Both will come with Android version 2.3.
The Wise Touch Tablet follows another African hardware project in Ghana producing its own ipads dubbed K-pad.
