ARCHOS Diamond Smartphone, 80b Helium Tablet Launch For Less Than $200 Each

ARCHOS will be unveiling a new range of smartphones and tablets at CES this year, which includes the ARCHOS Diamond, an under-$200 4G smartphone; the 80b Helium, a $150 4G tablet; the new 45b, 50b, 50c Helium smartphones; and the new 70 and 101 Helium tablets. As you've probably deduced, the devices are named based on their screen sizes -- the 80b is an 8" tablet, the 45b is a 4.5" smartphone, and so on.

Today, ARCHOS offered more information about the ARCHOS Diamond and the 80b Helium. The Diamond comes with an octa-core Snapdragon 615 processor, 16 GB of storage, 2 GB of RAM, 16MP camera, a 5" Full HD IPS screen, and 4G connectivity.

"In 2014, consumers don't have access to high performance handsets from traditional smartphone vendors below $500," said Loïc Poirier, General Director of ARCHOS. "With the ARCHOS 50 Diamond, we are pushing forward the same advanced technology but we make it accessible to all consumers."

The processor is based on the 64-bit Cortex A53 CPU cores, which are typically lower-end processors. However, given the $200 price and its other higher-end specs, it seems like a strong competitor to other similarly-priced devices such as the Moto G, which only has an 8MP camera, for example.

It remains to be seen if the camera is as good as other high-end 16MP shooters, though. Lately, low-end devices have begun a trend of using high-resolution cameras that don't look nearly as good as cameras with the same resolution from other more expensive devices. The storage is also likely to be of lower quality and slower speeds, but it will probably be good enough for this price range.

The 80b Helium tablet has an 8" screen, 1024 x 600 resolution, a quad-core 1.5 GHz processor, 8 GB of storage, and 4G connectivity which purportedly can be used to download a 2 GB file in less than 3 minutes. The big selling point of this tablet seems to be the low $150 price point. ARCHOS has a history of making affordable tablets, and it seems they've stuck with that strategy, which can only mean it's been relatively successful for them as a lesser-known player in the mobile market.

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