California-based IT company Hewlett-Packard (HP) on Tuesday launched its new range of ‘Made for India’ HP Pro 8 tablets in the Indian tech market. Carried a starting price tag of Rs. 19,374, the new HP Pro 8 tablets are specially designed to support digital delivery of services and other benefit schemes – in line with the Government’s Digital India drive.
The new tablets are aimed at monitoring subsidy distribution through Aadhaar authentication, supporting financial inclusion, and delivering other benefits related to government schemes. The tablet supports Indian regional languages which include Assamese, Bengali, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu. The HP Pro 8 tablet range comes with a host of customisable features to allow the delivery of services such as — financial inclusion and benefit schemes, efficient delivery of subsidised food products under the Public Distribution System (PDS), comprehensive monitoring of various healthcare initiatives and several other flagship programmes run by the Central and State governments.
To ensure reliable and secure operation under varying Indian field conditions, the new range of HP Pro 8 tablets have been designed by HP’s Digital India Unit with specific inputs from public and private sector customers. The devices feature water and dust resistant body, sunlight readable screen for outdoor usage, and a mammoth battery for ongoing operation. Apart from this, the tablets also feature an iris and fingerprint scanner for the Aadhaar-based authentication process, a barcode scanner for inventory management and thermal printer & magnetic-stripe reader for financial transactions.
Commenting on the launch, Sumeer Chandra, Managing Director, HP Inc. India, said, “The Government of India is undertaking a massive digital push towards India’s transformation. As a long standing partner in India’s digital journey, we take this opportunity to provide solutions that can solve real life problems for citizens of India. With these Made for India devices, our aim is to offer efficient end-point solutions to enable various flagship schemes for direct benefit transfer, financial Inclusion, and healthcare.”
Technically speaking, the base model of the HP Pro 8 tablet comes equipped with an 8-inch WXGA display with a screen resolution of 1280×800 pixels. Under the hood, the tablet is powered by a 64-bit 1.3GHz MediaTek MT8735 quad-core processor coupled with Mali-T720 GPU to handle the graphics. In terms of memory, the HP Pro 8 is backed up by a 2GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 16GB of native storage, which is further expandable (up to 64GB) via a microSD card. Talking about its software front, the tablet runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system. In terms of optics, the HP Pro 8 sports a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with autofocus and an LED Flash. On the front, the tablet features a 2-megapixel camera unit for capturing selfies. Connectivity options offered by the HP Pro 8 include single Micro-SIM support, 4G LTE (with voice calling), Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, a 3.5mm headphone jack and a microUSB port for charging and other connectivity. Sensors on the device include an Accelerometer, Ambient Light Sensor, Gyroscope, and Proximity sensor. On the battery front, the tablet packs a mammoth 6,000mAh battery that rated to deliver up to 15 hours of battery life. Dimensionally, it measures 128 x 210.7 x 11.9 mm and 488 grams.
