North Korea has manufactured its own tablet device that has been deemed “surprisingly impressive” by the select few who have managed to get their hands on it, digitalspy.co.uk reports.
The notoriously secretive and insular country is not particularly well known in the west for being an exporter of cutting-edge tech, with most of the developments rarely – if ever – making it across the border.
This has all changed with the introduction of a new tablet device that has fallen into the hands of a tourist who, for security purposes, has only given his name as “Michael”. The traveller announced that he managed to buy the tablet for the equivalent of around £132, before posting his thoughts on the device online.
Now, in light of the reveal, North Korea Tech has posted an in-depth review of the device, officially naming it as the Samjiyon.
Whilst “Michael” proclaimed that the device was “surprisingly impressive”, other western analysts may not all be quite so quick to heap praise, especially considering the tablet lacks one feature now seen to be central to any such device: wi-fi.
The Samjiyon may come with games (including ‘Angry Birds’ that many have claimed is likely to be pirated), but it does not enable users to connect wirelessly, as the internet is largely off-limits to the typical resident of North Korea.
Aside from this somewhat large omission, the tablet itself has been deemed to have the kind of technology that could compete with even the largest players in the mobile tech industry, such as Apple and Samsung.
Those who use their tablets for downloading e-books, however, would still be serviced by the Samjiyon, albeit in a more prescribed fashion, after thenextweb.com reports it comes pre-loaded with reading material. The only issue is that it’s Juche Study Books, detailing Kim-Il Sung’s polemic political theory.
