Archos prepares new/improved touch-tablets

Archos are prepping to enter the touch-tablets market and they want to do it in style, with a bunch of different devices that could satisfy the needs of a wide range of potential clients.

They already have the Archos 9 on the market for quite a while, but now they tell us they plan improved features for it. Instead of 1.1 GHz Atom Z510 processor, they’re going to offer one a little bit more powerful, running at 1.2 GHz . However, rest of the specs remain the same for now, with the 8.9 resistive display (1024 x 600 px), 1 GB of RAM and the small 1.8 inch 60 GB hard-drive.

Archos 9 Internet Tablet

Also, according to JkMobile, Archos representatives speak of a capacitive display and integrated 3G somewhere in the near future. Those features would really be nice, but will probably drive price upwards quite a bit, while eating battery life.

The more important news is the one about the two new “Home Tablets” launched by Archos.

First, there’s the Archos 7, a device meant to be used while laying on the coach on in bed. Comes with a 7 inch touch-display, is incredibly thin (12 mm – 0.5 inch) and light (350 g – 0.8 lbs) and comes with Wi-Fi and USB connections. Thus, it can be used for web-surfing, watching videos from Youtube or clips stores on a flash drive or external HDD. There’s also quite an autonomy available: up to 7 hours for video playing and 44 for music

Archos new home tablets: 7 and 8

Then, there’s the Archos 8, a home tablet with an 8 inch touchscreen meant to “keep the family connected to each other”, according to Archos. For me, it looks like a fancy digital-frame that can also access the Internet. Can be used at home or in the office for various activities (displaying content, checking social services, setting up objectives and tasks for others, etc), but i for one am not fond of the farm-factor with the big bezel around the screen. And although light (400 g) and thin (12 mm), i don’t really see myself using one of these.

Both devices have starting prices of only $179 and should be available from April. They come with Android as the OS, but unfortunately offer quite poor hardware (based on a 600 MHz ARM 9 processor), so i can’t stop wondering how snappy the interface will be. But the folks at Archos are aware of the problem and are working on a  complete new line of tablets based on ARM Cortex processors. So stay tuned for more details on Archos tablets in the next months.

Source: Archos

Tags: Archos, Internet tablet, touch tablet, touchscreen