Archos: Mid-range smartphone and outdoor series Sense X to the IFA

Archos is presenting three new devices of the Diamond and Sense series at IFA 2017. In addition to the new company flagship in the form of the Diamond Alpha +, the manufacturer is presenting three rugged devices for outdoor use with the Sense 47X, 50X and the 101X.

Angenehmes Flaggschiff mit viel Speicher und einer Tücke

In contrast to Archos, the manufacturer uses the Diamond Alpha +, the upper center segment. In the course of the short presentation makes the smartphone a very good impression, because it is well in the hand and is very well processed. On the technical side, a Snapdragon 653, 6 gigabytes of RAM and 128 gigabytes of data storage are available. More memory space can be added via a memory card. The 5.2-inch display dissolves in Full HD.

On the back, the Diamond Alpha + features two camera modules, each with 13 megapixels, which are intended to provide detailed images using black-and-white and color images, in addition to a fingerprint sensor. The USB-type C connector is also pleasing. The operating system turns out to be the only problem. The Diamond Alpha + from Archos is delivered with Android 6 Marshmallow, which is incomprehensible at this time and especially with the advent of Android 8.0. The demand, whether an update on Android 7 is planned, was denied by the manufacturer. The Archos Diamond Alpha + is scheduled to be available in October for around € 400.

Tablet with unusual Rockchip-SoC

The Diamond Tab (2017) offers 10.1 inches in the diagonal and a resolution of 2,560 × 1,600 pixels. The tablet is driven by a rarely used Rockchip RK3399 with a total of six cores in two clusters. It is similar in scale to the Snapdragon 650 from Qualcomm. The working memory is 4, the data memory is 64 gigabytes. The Archos Diamond Tab (2017) will also be released in October. The recommended price is about 300 euros.

Nothing whole and nothing for the outdoor sector

All three branches are certified according to IP68. In addition, thanks to the rugged frame, they should be able to unload falls from a height of one meter. For all hardware, Archos uses older Quad-Core SoCs from MediaTek for all three devices. The outdoor series is expected to reach retail stores in September at around 200, 230 and 260 euros.

For the demonstration of the outdoor abilities, none of the devices could be subjected to a drop test during the performance. Only the two smartphones were placed in a vase full of tap water. Already in this scenario a coarse fauxpas appeared – both displays perceived the touch of the water as a touch input and clicked wildly through the menu.