Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: Archos, Android, Phone, Tablet | Themes: 3GSM, Smartphones
Slowly but surely, the number of Android phones on the market is creeping towards what you'd call a healthy selection. Helping things along is Archos with the Android handset it announced back in February.
I don't expect you to remember anything said back then seven or eight months ago (goodness knows I had to check my old article to jog my memory), so here's a quick reminder:
Archos, a company revered for its PMP devices, is now entering the mobile phone market as well. Sometime in the third quarter of 2009, Archos will release a new Internet Media Tablet (IMT), a device that looks to combine touchscreen PMP/multimedia goodness with the Android OS from Google. While products from the French PMP manufacturer have been equipped with Wi-Fi and 3G mobile broadband for well over a year, the IMT is the first product from Archos that is meant to be a phone as well as a media player.
Now that we're all caught up, you might notice that we're happily plodding through the Q3 at the moment, meaning it's high time Archos spilled the beans on this thing.
The company yesterday gave a teeny sneak peak of what we can expect from the device. How does 10 mm thick, a 4.3-inch screen (854 x 480 resolution) and a 1 GHz ARM processor sound? It's not much in the way of details but when you coupled with what we heard back in February (a 5-inch touchscreen, 10 mm thick, up to 500 GB of storage, "access whenever and wherever to TV, movies, photos, music and games," and support for a myriad of standard and high definition video formats, along with Wi-Fi, 3.5G HSUPA mobile broadband, and full page web browsing and Flash/Flash Video support), it's enough to make my inner-geek scream, "WANT! WANT! WANT!"
Anyone else interested? Let us know in the comments below!
Image credit: Engadget
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If it's on ATT or Verizon, SOLD!!! If not, prolly will still buy for the 500gb, don't like having to carry a phone and an mp3.
just glad it's GSM... death to CDMA!
As long as they don't overprice it and possibly undercut the iPhone then maybe Archos has finally caught on. Yes I say "finally caught on". I like Archos products and have read many reviews on their stuff but never committed to buying anything from them for two reasons - overpriced and no mass user acceptance. Maybe they won't trip up this time without being overpriced... so they get deeper market penetration.
i own an archos internet media tablet the newest one with 250gb and its 5inch touch screen. has a very high resloution can play 720p files (not MKV yet but i herd it is comeing) its all linux based in the operating system. i have the GPS add on unit for it also. i love it i am not an apple lover at all. i wanted something that i could fit all my music and still have room for movies. DVD quality movies look just wonderfull on it. right now i have 60GB of music and around 120 movies on it and a couple tv show. These things can do everything. GPS (need to purchase seperatly comes with a the software to add and then the window mount for your vehical, mount very usefull for just a holder too.), has built in WIFI has an internet browser. you can put any flash games you want on it (downloed like 50 or 60 off the net and put them on there). organizes pictures, play music of course, movies 720p, dvd quality, dvd rips that are 4gb them selfs, avi, divx, xvid, mpeg, realplayer, podcasts. (have not had one that didn't work except for MKV), can get a docking station for your TV that can put out through HDMI and with the remote has a full keyboard and can display at 720p, you can also get 7in one with up to 320gb or more now. but if your just useing movies and music this thing is the way to go i travel back and forth from saudi arabia (work on the rigs) and this thing is 10 times better then an ipod with only a max of 64gb. oh did i also say it has a kickstand so you can put it on a table with out propping it up against something.
That's what i want. Too bad it doesn't have a camera! Hopefully it will work with tmobile.
If it is Archos expect to pay $20 extra after market for every little feature that should be part of the original product. Oh and don't forget to have it constantly ping you to buy said add-ons. I concider my Archos WIFI the biggest purchase mistake I have ever made.
Looks like i as going to switch to the company that gets this phone!! Archos has had good hardware but needed help on software and Google has good software but has not yet been on that great of a phone. looks like a new phone for me.
just glad it's GSM... death to CDMA!
Yes please ignore that CDMA has better bandwidth, is capable of handling more than 3x the traffic of GSM, has more room for improvement, and a better range per tower. There is a reason Japan uses a newer variant of CDMA (UTMS).
Yes please ignore that CDMA has better bandwidth, is capable of handling more than 3x the traffic of GSM, has more room for improvement, and a better range per tower. There is a reason Japan uses a newer variant of CDMA (UTMS).
sounds like marketing propaganda to me. there's a reason most of the world uses GSM... and it's not only because of a hatred towards qualcomm...
there's a reason most of the world uses GSM.
Because the technology has been around since the 1980's.
Japanese uses WCDMA(UMTS) which is 3G of GSM, not CDMA. 3G CDMA is called CDMA 2000.
That's why iPhone works in Japan on 3G part. That's also why iPhone never have CDMA version.
they are gonna fit a 500gb 2.5" hdd into that thing?!? lol! HDD's consume A LOT of power.
along with Wi-Fi, 3.5G HSUPA, TV, 1ghz cpu.
= only a few hours of battery time.
few hours of porn
500GB is one good thing and the rest is nice too.
500GB is one good thing and the rest is nice too.
No, a large storage is essential for a good PMP. That and flawless support for Ogg, Musepack, FLAC and APE together with a fast and easy GUI that helps one to browse and manage large quantities of files. There's still no such player in the market today with all of those features.
ecsw is pretty much right. Cerealkiller you need to get ur facts straight.
AT&T, the GSM company uses WCDMA (Wideband CDMA) and HSDPA and HSUPA soon. All are 3G technologies, the same as Japan and only available on AT&T at the moment, although t-mobile will have HSUPA soon I believe.
CDMA does have better penetration over GSM and thats about the only thing you were right about. GSM uses a different method of traffic handling, not better nor worse than CDMA. I've never had a issue on at&t trying to call out due to high traffic.
Furthermore, At&t's 3G service does a MUCH better job at passing off from 1 tower to another. I am cabale of roaming this city listening to 128kbit streaming mp3 audio over the net with no buffering at all. It's beautiful. I could not do that with EVDO, verison/alltel/sprints 3G counterpart.
Plus, worldwide GSM, gets all the good phones =)
CDMA used to have it's advantage over TDMA/GSM. It does handle more connection per tower. But GSM found it's way to correct itself and created the new standard WCDMA. Notice the term "CDMA" in WCDMA? That means it's not base on TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) anymore and hence can handle more connections just like CDMA does.
There's no right and wrong on either side. It's like some countries drive on the right and some on the left. But if GSM is everywhere else around the world (CDMA is only in USA/Canada/Korea small part of China), I'd rather pick a phone that can be used in different countries.