ARCHOS, the French electronics brand, has announced a number of new entry-level Android smartphones that will be showcased at the IFA trade show in Berlin next month. The devices come with price-tags ranging from £80 to £119, and according to the company, will go on sale this October. All the devices on the list run Android 6.0 Marshmallow “in its purest version”, meaning the company isn’t customizing Google’s operating system with its own skin, unlike most other vendors. There is, however, no word on whether the company intends to push Android 7.0 Nougat to the handsets at some stage. All the devices announced today also support LTE connectivity, have dual SIM slots and support micro SD cards for expansion of storage capacity.
Starting at just £79.90, the ARCHOS 50f Helium happens to be the most affordable of the lot. The smartphone features a 5-inch 720p display panel and is powered by a Snapdragon 210 SoC from Qualcomm. It will ship with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of built-in storage, but the main attraction of the handset promises to be the fingerprint scanner, which is a rarity in devices at this price range outside China. The ARCHOS 50f Helium will have an 8-megapixel auto-focus primary camera with LED flash and a 2-megapixel secondary camera for selfies and video chats. While the aforementioned version will cost £99.90, the device will also have an even more affordable model with just the 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage that will come with a £79.90 price-tag.
Finally, the company also announced the ARCHOS 55 Helium range, which starts at £89. The base model features a 5.5-inch 720p display panel and comes with a Mediatek MT6737 chipset under the hood. Other hardware specs include 1GB of RAM and 16GB internal storage, while the battery happens to be a 2,700mAh unit. The primary camera will be an 8-megapixel shooter with auto-focus and an LED flash, while the secondary camera on the front will come with a 2-megapixel sensor. The device will also have a better spec’d variant in the form of the 55 Helium Ultra, which will come with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of built-in storage, and cost £119 unlocked. Meanwhile, the base model will also come in a customizable avatar with 4 interchangeable back casings. Named the ARCHOS 55 Helium 4 Seasons, it will be identical to the ARCHOS 55 Helium in terms of hardware, and cost £100 off-contract.
