Amazon's Kindle Fire Kids Edition tablet for children has a new challenger waiting in the wings - EE's Robin.
EE, a UK-based digital communications company, has forayed into the child-friendly tablet space with the introduction of its 7-inch Robin tablet, which is designed keeping families in mind.
"Parents know their children are using gadgets more than ever before and the Robin from EE allows kids to not only enjoy the tablet experience but benefit with e-learning as well. What's more the Robin is designed so that parents can have peace of mind that their child is protected online wherever they are on the UK's biggest and fastest 4G network," says Christopher Traggio, Director of Connected Products at EE.
The Robin tablet will sport a 7-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 1,024 x 600 pixels. Under the hood, the tablet from EE will house a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 processor which clocks in at 1.1GHz. While the hardware may not impress much, the tablet packs sufficient power for the purpose of viewing educational apps and casual gaming.
The EE tablet has a rubber casing and will also support 1GB of RAM and have 8GB of on-board memory storage, which can be expanded to a maximum of 32GB through a microSD card.
Robin will also pack in a 2,820 mAh battery and 4G connectivity, which is a feature notably missing in Amazon's Kindle Fire Kids Edition. Thanks to 4G connectivity, one will be able to browse faster - which is a plus when one has impatient children eagerly waiting to watch a buffering video. Access to 4G connectivity also means that one can use the device on-the-go when traveling and need not rely on Wi-Fi hotspots alone.
The Robin will also sport a 2MP rear-facing camera which can be handy if the user wishes to capture some moments without a smartphone around. Otherwise, the pixels leave a lot to be desired for it to take clear photographs. The tablet also has front-facing VGA camera.
The Robin comes pre-loaded with Android 5.1 Lollipop and has the child-centric Kurio OS built on top. The tablet also has advanced parental locks and control features. Some features work on their own, whereas a few need to be tweaked manually.
Parents can also set-up profiles for their kids and have app and web filtering to monitor access. They can also control how much the child can play on the device. Access time to certain videos and games can also be restricted.
Robin will come with more than 40 pre-loaded games, eBooks, and educational apps. Kids will also have free and unrestricted access to Hopster, a media streaming service meant for children.
Come Oct. 23, EE's Robin will go on sale in select store and online from Nov. 2. The tablet will set consumers back by £129.99 (approximately $200) on Pay As You Go.
