[liberationtech] Low-Cost Tablets

[Sumantra Roy]

Hello - I am the co-founder of a new social enterprise named Learning Yogi 
(www.LearningYogi.org) whose objective is to distribute low-cost Android 
tablets containing educational games to extremely underprivileged children 
in India and other developing countries. The tablet is designed to teach 
children topics like English, Maths, Science, etc.

Given the nature of the target market and the very limited resources at 
their disposal, the tablet needs to be as low-cost as possible.

We want to identify a Chinese manufacturer who can produce such low-cost 
tablets for us in bulk. While we can compromise on things like memory, 
capacity, processor speed etc., in order to reduce the cost of the tablet, 
the key quality parameter for us is to ensure that the tablets have an 
average longevity of at least 2 years - i.e. they must be hardy enough to 
last for at least 2 years or so on average even when they are used by kids 
in the somewhat harsh (hot, humid and dusty) conditions that are found in 
villages and urban slums in India.

I would love to get some advice from anyone on this list who has experience 
sourcing products from China and/or who can advise us on how to go about 
estimating the average lifespan of different models of tablets. If you have 
some expertise in this, please drop me an email and we can then discuss it 
further offline.

Thanks,
Sumantra
Founder and CEO, Learning Yogi.
http://www.LearningYogi.org