Vodacom has already taken to the tablet market with their low-cost Smart Tab 3G, now MTN has announced that they also want a piece of that pie with the unveiling of the MTN Steppa Tablet.
Read More: Vodacom Smart Tab 3G
Priced along the same lines as Vodacom’s Smart Tab, with fairly simliar specs across the board, the Steppa Tablet seems to have a minor hardware advantage of its recently-released rival. The Steppa Tablet will sport a Qualcomm 200 quad-core CPU (1.2GHz), 1GB of RAM and 4GB of storage out of the box, with wireless and data access built into the 7-inch tab.
The screen will be a 1,024 x 600 WXGA panel, there’s a 2MP rear camera and a 0.3MP front-facer as well as 3,500mAH battery to keep things going but it’s the apps, which will be largely pre-installed, that MTN is hoping will set this tablet apart.
MTN is punting an “impressive number” of built in apps for everything from news to sports to social networks, with a dictionary, Kindle and Wikipedia apps rounding out the educational side of things. Call us nasty if you like but we smell bloatware, educational or not. The Steppa Tablet will run Android 4.4 but it remains to be seenwhether MTN will be using a cleaner interface than their custom Steppa smartphone hard. The Steppa, if you recall, featured a custom skin from MTN that we were not fond of at all.
MTN’s GM for Products, Services and Innovation Mike Fairon said in a statement that “The tablet combines features and affordability, and because it comes with a competitive data package, we continue delivering on our promise of delivering internet access to consumers.”
The Steppa Tablet is due to hit ‘selected retailers’, which probably means CNA and a couple of others that favour MTN’s hardware and services, by the end of November this year. The price, in keeping with the Vodacom competition, will be R1,000 per unit according to MTN.
As soon as we get our hands on one, we’ll let you know how it does compared to the Vodacom Smart Tab 3G in a direct head-to-head.
