Archos unveils a £50 smartphone... with some half-decent specs

Archos isn’t a big name in phones but it has a reasonable track record with affordable devices and it’s looking to build on that with the launch of three new smartphone ranges, plus a new tablet.

At the ‘upper’ end there’s the Archos Sense 47X, which has a 4.7-inch HD display, a quad-core chipset, 1GB of RAM, a 13MP rear camera, a 5MP front-facing one, a 3,000mAh battery, 16GB of storage and a microSD card slot. But its most interesting features are its ability to supposedly survive drops of more than one meter, and that it’s IP68 certified dust and water resistant.

Those sorts of rugged features aren’t common on low-end phones, yet the Archos Sense 47X will cost just £129.99 (around $170/AU$210) when it launches in Europe this October.

Archos is also launching the Sense 101 X tablet alongside this budget handset. Apparently designed for hostile environments, this slate has a 10.1-inch HD screen, a quad-core chipset, 2GB of RAM, a 6,000mAh battery, a 5MP rear camera, a 2MP front-facing one, 32GB of storage and a microSD card slot. 

This tablet-tech combo will cost you £199.99 (roughly $260/AU$325).

Back to basics

If your daily commute doesn’t involve extreme conditions then you might be just as happy with the Archos Core range of phones, which come with 5.0-inch HD screens, quad-core chipsets, 1GB or 2GB of RAM, 2,000mAh batteries, 13MP or 8MP rear cameras, 5MP or 2MP front-facing ones, 16GB of storage and a microSD card slot.

There’s no water resistance here, but they’re priced at less than £100 (approximately $130/AU$160) and launch in Europe sometime this September.

The cheapest options come in the shape of the Archos Access range of smartphones, which come in 4, 4.5, 5 and 5.5-inch sizes, all with quad-core chipsets, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot.

They have either 5MP or 8MP rear cameras and 2MP front-facing ones, with a battery of between 1,200mAh and 2,300mAh and are priced at between £49.99 (roughly $65/AU$80) and £79.99 (approximately $105/AU$130), with a September release date for launching in Europe.

We wouldn’t count on any of them launching further afield, but if you’re after a cheap phone there are lots of other options.

• The Moto G5 is one of the best cheap phones around

from TechRadar: Phone and communications news http://www.techradar.com/news/archos-unveils-a-50-smartphone-with-some-half-decent-specs