Archos Announces New Oxygen Mobile Line Up

With MWC 2016 fast approaching, some companies are busy preparing their big reveals. Some, however, are very early birds, getting things out of the way quickly. Days before the congress, French OEM Archos is unveiling its latest roster of mobile devices for its "high end" Oxygen brand. Of course, given Archos' specialty, high end here means decent wallet friendly Android smartphones and tablets. That said, the three new Marshmallow-powered Oxygen tablets and the Lollipop-toting 50d Oxygen smartphone could still give other mid-range devices a run for their money.

While not boasting QHD resolutions, the ARCHOS 50d Oxygen's 5-inch screen at least has 1920x1080 pixels, which is just fine given the handier size and pixel density that it brings. There's 2 GB of RAM, which is just about right, paired with a MediaTek CPU, which shouldn't really be a surprise here. To be specific, that's an octa-core MTK6753 running at 1.3 GHz. There's only 16 GB of storage but that can be supplemented by up to 32 GB more via a microSD card.

The 50d Oxygen sports a 13 megapixel camera on the back and 5 megapixels on the front. While those are indeed pretty large numbers, by now most smartphone savvy people already know that megapixel count doesn't always count. Strangely, the smartphone will run Android 5.1 Lollipop out of the box, with no advice on a Marshmallow upgrade. The ARCHOS 50d Oxygen smartphone will go on sale in May for 129 GBP or $184.

For those who want a more up to date Android experience, Archos is offering three new Oxygen tablets, all of them running Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The ARCHOS 70 Oxygen, 80 Oxygen, and 101b Oxygen are pretty much all the same except in screen size, at 7, 8, and 10.1 inches respectively. The 70 and 80 Oxygen tablets have a resolution of 1920x1200 while the 101b Oxygen has just a wee bit more at 1920x1280, all IPS LCD panels. They all run on a quad-core 1.3 GHz MTK8163A processor and is given 2 GB of RAM to work with. There's also only 16 GB of internal storage and, sadly, no mention of expansion options. As is usual for a tablet, the cameras aren't going to wow anyone, at 5 and 2 megapixels, back and front, respectively.

Given the modest specs, expect modest prices as well. The ARCHOS 70 Oxygen will go for 75 GBP ($107), the ARCHOS 80 Oxygen for 99.99 GBP ($143), and the ARCHOS 101b Oxygen for 119 GBP ($170), with sales starting in May.