I wouldn’t be shocked to hear that you had perhaps forgotten about the Archos G9 tablets. They haven’t seen much coverage of late, though we did get our hands on one back in October. In our review we found them to be fun but ugly, with various ports and a somewhat untrustworthy build quality, though solid enough for casual use.
But the 8- and 10-inch G9 slates may be due for a refresh, which is exactly what they’ll get come the new year. Archos has confirmed that Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich will be available on the G9 series in Q1 2012. To prove it, they sent us over a video of ICS running on an OMAP 4-powered G9. → Read More
Short Version: The Archos 80 G9 tablet isn’t necessarily something I’d recommend for the hardcore tablet enthusiast, but it certainly gets the job done. Powered by pure Android 3.2 Honeycomb, the tab offers everything you’d expect out of Android and a nice variety of ports, albeit with a somewhat rough build-quality. → Read More
The Archos G9 tablet comes in two flavors, 8-inch and 10-inch, and runs Honeycomb 3.2. The specs are more than acceptable with the 8-incher starting at $299 for 1 GHz of power and $100 more for a half a GHz extra. The tablets have internal flash memory of up to 16GB or a 250GB hard drive, your choice.
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The Philadelphia Media Network has had an ambitious summer: in July, the company announced their intention to sell subsidized Android tablets with subscriptions to the digital editions of Philly’s two daily papers. August was presumably spent sourcing hardware and working on the apps, and now that summer is over, PMN is ready to reveal the fruits of their labor. → Read More
John riled up the Internet the other day by stating buying Archos’ latest, low-cost tablet is like buying cut-rate toilet paper. I get that and fully agree. Howover, some people have more of a tolerance for crapgadgets than others and if that’s you, head over to Woot and snag this $80 7-inch Android tablet. It’s 2010′s model running on Android 1.6 but comes with a modest 8GB of memory and plenty of video codex support. $80 and it’s yours. → Read More
This $99 Archos tablet runs Froyo and has a 7-inch 800 x 480 pixel resistive touchscreen and 4 amazing GB of storage. No mention of processor but I suspect a few TI-81s have sacrificed their lives to be part of this mess. → Read More
The comments on yesterday’s post concerning the Xoom’s bungled launch stated loud and clear that people want inexpensive Android tablets — or at least that the high MSRP was the Xoom’s undoing. The thought is that if you’re going to spend over $500 on a tablet, the iPad is the only choice, which therefore makes the $800 Xoom a no-sale. I sort of agree with that even though I still feel the Xoom is a fantastic tablet. Still, I feel the poor marketing and product placement doomed the tablet rather than the price alone. Motorola never publicly justified the price. That said, the Xoom would be a similar, but still different fail whale even if it launched at $300. It wouldn’t be the same Xoom. The dual core CPU, lovely screen, and abundant amounts of memory would be the first options on the cutting board. From there Moto would have probably slash the build quality from solid to cheap along with opting for a weaker battery. A lower-priced Xoom tablet would not be a more successful tablet. The vertical iTunes ecosystem opens up a huge revenue stream that allows Apple to price products different than most Android tablet makers. It’s not fair, really. Still, it’s disingenuous to say companies are ignoring the low-end Android tablet market. It’s actually alive, well, and more than thriving. But please, don’t call the tablets after the jump iPad or even Xoom competitors. They’re not even in the same league. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth a look. → Read More
Archos quietly became the favorite low-cost Android tablet maker of fanboys everywhere thanks to a solid 2010 offering. The company’s Arnova brand builds upon the same formula with even cheaper tablets. The secret sauce? The bare minimum amount of internal memory. But buyers might overlook that little detail especially with the Arnova 10 shipping for only $180. → Read More
Remember Archos? With all this talk of Droids v. iStuff, Archos’ stable and handsome PMP/Tablet line has been cast by the wayside, relegated to a distant third place where it commiserates daily with Creative and the Zune. However in many markets Archos is still a leader and now they have the financials to prove it. According to a recent release, Archos hit 83 million Euro in revenue compared to 59 in 2009. Most of the revenue came from Europe with 116.2% growth and, surprisingly, an over two-fold increase in revenue in America. → Read More
A proposed French law (well, an expansion of an existing law) has supporters of Android and other non-Windows operating systems slightly upset. The law would make it so that France’s private copying levy applies to all non-Windows tablets, that is, Android tablets and the iPad. The private copying levy was first introduced several years ago and adds a “copying fee” to several forms of recordable media, including blank audio CDs and portable media players of a certain size. The question becomes, what’s so special about Windows-based tablets that would exempt it from the law? → Read More
I don’t know why I said that in a pirate voice. Probably because the news that this 10-inch tablet, highly anticipated in some quarters, is now shipping. At least, the 8GB version is. It won’t arrive with 2.2 on it, like the other Archos tablets, though. What, do you think Froyo grows on trees?! Avast! Update: It was for a little while, anyway. Are they finding these things or growing them from seeds? Taking their sweet time either way. → Read More
We posted a video a little while back of Froyo running on Archos’ recently-released Android tablets, and figured that the real rollout must be happening soon. Well, that seems to be the case, as the 28, 43, 70, and 101 models are now (or will be soon) shipping with Android 2.2 baked right on in. → Read More
Good news for the Archos fans out there who’ve been waiting on the Froyo update since the new line’s introduction in August. It seems that the time is drawing near when you will have it running officially on your tablet &mdsah; though you certainly might have hacked it on there before now. This is the official build, much less risk of bricking. → Read More
Just when you thought you were safe from tablet news for a day… Archos strikes. The new Archos line of tablets has just been revealed, and there’s something for everybody, as long as everybody wants some kind of Android device. → Read More
The iPad is the king of tablets and might hold that title for years to come. However, there are a ton of alternatives that we’ve featured over the last few months, mostly in these two posts (1 & 2) detailing the top 14. But since I ran those posts, a lot has changed and while some managed to make it to the market, others were delayed or scrapped entirely.
It’s sad, really. While the iPad caters to the masses with the Luddite-approved iOS, others crave much more usability and none of the tablets announced that claim to fulfills these needs have been released yet. Click through to see what I mean. → Read More
We now have a release date and price for the Archos 7 Home Tablet, a device that Matt has been talking about pretty much nonstop for a while now. Does June for $199 sound good to you? Hope so, because that’s what we’re looking at. → Read More
The Archos 5 Internet Tablet just got a bit cooler. It finally has access to paid apps from the Android Market thanks to the latest firmware. This solves one of the biggest gripes we’ve heard about the small Android tablets. Previsously users could only download the free Android apps, not the preimum apps that cost something. This is actually a significant move in the Android tablet market, a trend we hope is followed by others. → Read More
The Archos 7 Home Tablet is coming to America, everyone. The product’s US availability has always been in question but now that it’s hanging with the boys down at the FCC, it’s all but announced for America. We still don’t have a release date, though. → Read More
The iPad isn’t the only upcoming slate computer. Archos has the 7 Home Tablet coming real soon as well. The 7-inch Android tablet doesn’t have an official release date as of yet, but a German retailer states that it will be shipping in a week. Why the iPad launches on April 3rd? Coincidence? We think not. → Read More
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