French smartphone maker Archos loves to flood the market with multiple devices at once, and it’s done it yet again. Today it’s unveiled no less than three new handsets, though, in fairness, two of them are actually identical in terms of hardware.
What sets the Archos 50 Cesium and the Archos 50e Helium apart, then, is the software. Namely the fact that the former will run Windows 10 Mobile when it launches, while the latter sticks with Android.
So the Archos 50 Cesium gets to be one of the first Windows 10-running smartphones ever to be made official. It comes with a 5-inch 720p touchscreen, an 8 MP rear camera with LED flash, a 2 MP front snapper, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of expandable storage, and a 2,100 mAh battery.
It’s powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 210 chipset, boasting a 1.1 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU and Adreno 304 GPU. Its dimensions are 147 x 72.5 x 8.5 mm. It has dual-SIM functionality and 4G LTE support.
The Archos 50e Helium will ship running Android 5.1 Lollipop, but is otherwise identical to the 50 Cesium. Both of these phones will cost £99 unlocked and SIM-free, and they’ll be out in November.
The Archos Diamond S, on the other hand, features a 5-inch 720p touchscreen with Gorilla Glass 3, a 16 MP rear camera with LED flash, an 8 MP selfie shooter, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, MediaTek’s MT6753 SoC with a 1.5 GHz octa-core CPU, and a 2,300 mAh battery.
Here too we find dual-SIM functionality built-in along with 4G LTE support. The Diamond S runs Android 5.1 Lollipop. Its dimensions are 152.6 x 76.4 x 8.4 mm, and it weighs 118g.
It will be priced at £159.99 in the UK when it becomes available in November. All three smartphones will be showcased by Archos at its booth at the IFA trade show in Berlin at the beginning of September.