North Korean Android tablet

Having visited one of the most closed countries in the world, a tourist shared with IDG News Service information about an Internet tablet, which he acquired in the homeland of Juche ideology. Technical specifications and preinstalled software once again remind about the political course of isolation of the DPRK.

A device called “Samiyon” (probably the name is given in honor of the city of the same name) is the third tablet released in North Korea. Most likely, it is manufactured outside the country, the DPRK's technical capabilities do not allow the production of consumer electronics, although the state is able to prepare its own software for the purchased hardware. It was first demonstrated at an industrial exhibition in Pyongyang in September last year. They also talked about him on North Korean television, but few foreign tourists could see him close by.

The purchase history was extremely simple: a tourist who prefers to be called only by the name of Michael noticed a device in a gift shop in a restaurant and was much surprised by this. Michael, bored while waiting for the smoking part of the group, asked if he could take a picture of the device. Jokingly, he even asked if the tablet was for sale. To his surprise, the answer was positive, the price was only 200 US dollars. (For comparison: the average salary of a DPRK citizen is less than $ 100. For an ordinary resident, Samiyon is a luxury item.)

The technical characteristics of the device are modest: there is a seven-inch screen with a resolution of 1024 × 768 pixels, a 2-megapixel camera, a processor with a clock frequency of 1.2 GHz. Of much greater interest is the tablet software: it runs on a customized version of Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich. Michael describes the tablet as surprisingly easy to use: the interface works without slowing down, and the camera initializes as quickly as it happens in the flagship models of the largest manufacturers in the world. Michael plays birds without lag graphics and controls.

Among the pre-installed programs there are no Google services; the tablet does not have YouTube and Gmail applications that require licensing, but all the usual icons are in place. These include an image gallery, calculator, camera and internet browser. The Internet is not accessible to most of the DPRK population, although many have access to the country's internal network, which has tightly controlled email and video streaming services.

It is curious that some programs developed in the West are installed on the tablet, including Angry Birds. Among the North Korean applications: a dictionary of information technology terms, a multilingual dictionary, an application with the history of Korea, Korean chess and a set of books to study the idea of ​​Juche, the national ideology of the DPRK.

There are four predefined bookmarks in the browser: this is the main news agency of North Korea, the main daily newspaper, the portal served by the Korean Computer Center and state television. Only the first three resources are available from the regular Internet; in Samiyon’s bookmarks, links to internal Korean intranet sites are used. Despite having a browser and bookmarks, Michael was not able to get online. From the configuration files far inside the system, it was possible to conclude that the tablet may have a WiFi module, but either it is not installed, or it is configured to work on only some networks.

State media praise Samiyon as a device useful to students. Indeed, it has several educational applications, one of them provides a virtual bookshelf with books about music, computers, mathematics, as well as helping to study the revolution (biographies of national leaders, etc.)

It is interesting that the tablet is equipped with a TV tuner, compatible with North Korean analog television. Its channels are pre-installed and cannot be changed, most likely this is done so that the user does not listen to a variety of foreign “voices”. It is alleged that Pyongyang can catch two stations.