Samsung Galaxy Tab Iris
Samsung has been investing heftily in
its local India research and development divisions lately and consequently,
more and more interesting offers and innovations, tailor-made for the
fast-growing market have started to appear. The latest such device is the newly
announced Samsung Galaxy Tab Iris, which as its name suggests, is equipped with
specialized iris-recognition technology.
The model is meant to be used with
certain biometric-based services within the government, like Aadhaar - a
centralized biometric and demographic database, operated by the Unique
Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) agency. The tablet is fully
compatible with said system and is also STQC-certified and thus proudly wears
the "Made for India" moniker as a tool aimed to simplify adoption and
usage of the Aadhaar system among others.
As for the device itself, it is far from
a tech powerhouse by today's standards. It is based on the 2014 Samsung Galaxy
Tab 3 Lite, which it might actually based on, with its 7.0-inch, 600 x 1024
pixels display. It also packs a quad-core processor, clocked at 1.2 Ghz, 1.5 GB
of LPDDR3 RAM and 8 GB of expandable storage.
The 193.4 x 116.4 x 9.7 mm, 327 gram
tablet has a 5MP camera on the back, alongside the iris-recognition hardware
itself. There is also Wi-Fi b/g/n on board, Bluetooth 4.1 USB host
functionality, which might come in handy and a 3,600 mAh battery pack powers the
show. The only notable absence seems to be 4G, which is odd, considering the
Korean giant's push towards the technology in its India-tailored offers of
late.
The price point for the Galaxy Tab Iris
is set at INR 13,499, or around US$ 200, but most units are likely to arrive in
bulk orders for professional use, rather than see much exposure on the end user
market.
