North Korean Android Tablet is Apparently Pretty Good

We don’t get to write about tech in North Korea too much, in part because the country is quite secretive and in part because it doesn’t produce a whole lot of technology products in the first place. But there are a few domestically-made tablets, and North Korea Tech has the lowdown on one, and Android tablet called the Samjiyon, that a tourist named Michael was able to purchase while in-country and then take home with him.

Apparently, the thing is surprisingly good, although it does come with a few North Korea specific hinderances, like the fact that it apparently can’t connect to Wifi and that its built-in browser is tuned to access sites on the North Korean intranet rather than the world wide web. Because of the lack of internet access, the tablet also lacks Google apps (they’re not particularly useful without the web anyway).

Perhaps most interesting, though, is that the tablet apparently comes with a number of foreign games pre-installed, including Fieldrunners and Angry Birds Rio. My guess is that these are probably pirated versions rather than the result of any official partnership with the developers, but we’ve reached out to several devs for comment and will update this post if we hear back.

North Korea Tech has a lot more detail on the Samjiyon in its review of the device, and I don’t want to steal its thunder, so just head on over there for the full review. It’s quite rare we get to learn about a piece of North Korean technology in this kind of detail.