Meet Earl, the first solar-powered backcountry survival tablet arrives in August
If you are an adventure-minded techie looking for a little more tumble and rough, the upcoming backcountry survival tablet may be something it is worth having a look at. Jon Perry, tablet’s creator has been inspired to develop a reliable and a tough gadget by his long-time backcountry companion – the dog Earl. That’s how everything has started. Now, after nearly 2 years of hard work, Sqigle INC is ready to show world’s first tablet designed to work in the harshest condition with one clear mission – to help you survive.
Earl is a 6-inch Android 4.1 Tablet with Flexible e-ink display with a resolution of 1024 x 768p and designed to provide extremely clear visibility in direct sunlight. The tablet is extremely durable in the harshest outside conditions – it is a dust/ water/ mud /heat and shockproof. Earl has been assigned a score of IP67 – allowing full water submersion for 30 min in 3 feet of water. Moreover, the tablet sustains temperatures between 0 and +50 degrees Celsius. The screen is gloves-friendly, which means you can use it without taking your gloves off, while the gyroscope included allows controlling the device easily, despite the conditions. Earl comes also with a “Lunar” mode for nighttime illumination, leading to increased emergency lantern. Earl features a 1GHz Cortex A9 processor with 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal memory.
Earl is solar-powered – the high-efficiency 18% mono crystalline cells provide up to 20 hours of power and the device is fully charged for 5 hours in direct sunlight. Equipped with GPS, Earl can give your precise location and elevation and it is connected with EveryTrail.com – you have an access to more than 300 000 traits and you can easily share your routes with the other enthusiasts or friends. To make you even more confident during the adventure trip, Earl includes a FRS, GMRS and MURS transceiver, allowing radio connectivity up to 20 miles. You can send alerts if you are in a danger or just messages, location or information about the weather conditions. Importantly, Earl is comparable with other available Android apps, so you have plenty of other options – the tablet supports also PDF, MOBI and E-pub formats.
You can back up the project, pre-ordering the tablet until June 9, even though the needed funds have been raised – the initial goal was $250.000, and currently 932 backers have raised $288.881. Available in two colors – Coal or Snow, Earl comes with preloaded 100k topo base resolution map covering USA, Mexico and Canada. During the pre-order campaign users can get 30% off the retail price, or they need to pay exactly $249.30. The production starts in July and the tablets will reach the backers by the end of the summer, Sqigle INC confirmed.
Source: Meetearl
