Archos 70 Android 7in tablet Whenever I ask people what they want in a tablet, I usually get the following answers in descending order of importance: a price tag south of £200, a 7in screen to keep things compact and the ability to play any video or music files you care to mention out of the box plus the option to play them out from HDMI. The Archos 70 fits …
Yes the price is higher, but why cannot Archos re-release this unit with Android 3 on it?
The price of the new tablets will probably drop in the next few months as more competition develops. Currently even the internet suppliers are sticking to the RRP because they know it's a sellers market, that situation won't stay like that for ever.
Android 3 isn't open source and is going to require items this unit doesn't have. No doubt Archos is working on the next generation of players that can support some of these items and will run the next version of Android. Just expect to see it north of $400 unsubsidized. I picked this up for $230 off of a Newegg sale.
You can get them for less than £175 if you look a bit harder.
I'm very pleased with them. The Android Market is easy to get hold of if that's your thang.
It's a shame they don't come with any sort of case, though - even a cheapie slip-over thing would be good.
The biggest problem I've had is that the OOM killer can be a bit random. But then I tend to run more and more things until something drops.
Oh - and you don't have to kill everything to run Angry Birds.
Vic.
Really; it won't charge from the micro-USB socket? (Checks Archos site) Nope, the 70 and the 101 require the charger. Bit of a fail there then; if the thing needs mort current than standard USB they could at least have supported USB charging ports so that car chargers with standard USB sockets would work.
The wall charger provides 2amps to the battery to charge. Most USB connections are going to top out at 500 milliamp. Gomadic offers adapters for their system for the Archos devices. They at least provide 1 amp output, which would help. Going over USB would just be a trickle charge, if that.
The thing has a 5.5 hour life on it according to the article. It takes longer than an hour to charge up via the wall, and I know it has a 2 amp output from the wall. On a .5 amp standard USB connection it will be discharging while playing video. This would confuse most consumers. Yes, we would like to have it to trickle normally, and slow down drain, but the average person would be upset their unit isn't charging.
..that USB 1/2/(3?) supports a maximum wattage, and was designed to only provide a charging mechanism for smaller devices, not 'power' devices like these. This is the price we pay for being on the wrong slope of a technology bell curve (which USB 1/2 is).
Then again, if we're talking about the 21st century tech, we should be talking about open standards-based wireless USB and wireless induction-based charging technology anyway.
The high power demands of a tablet make this challenging for all the manufacturers although it seems Archos have done less than most.
I was reading a mere PDF on my ipad2 whilst trickle charging from the lighter socket. All the charger was able to do was to maintain the current level. If I had been doing anything more strenuous it would have dropped.
Are you sure its running at 1ghz? I thought the 101 was restricted to 800 unless you rooted and unlocked it. 101 had soooo many issues, just like any other archos product. Have a search on their forums for various issues from tethering to simply not working as advertised.
Same as any other archos product. Great on the hard sell but doesnt live up to the hype.
I agree that the Android 3 tablets are a definite must for most people who read El Reg, but, my friend just bought the 10" version of this tablet which I had a hands-on with last night. I was quite impressed, it was cute and worked well for her. For me, the screen glare was an issue, the lack of USB charge was a bummer but it had a USB socket, HDMI, MicroSD slot and it's own built in stand. Not bad for the money really. Angry birds is awesome on the 10 inch screen.
I nice budget model IMHO.
just get an iOS device like Apple TV or iPhone and watch movie rentals on jailbroken devices by just:
* Watch a movie
Simpler isn't it? But you can still get a shell and move the su around just for Android emulation if you wish. (good luck thinking Google's only check is if it can su BTW)
Damn that control freak Steve Jobs! Oh, wait it's the other way around isn't it? My bad.
Surely a jailbroken iDevice is pretty much the same as a rooted Android device? They both have the control software removed.
I'm sure that there are iStore movie rentals that won't work on a jailbroken iDevice just like Google rentals won't work on a rooted device.
What's with the aggressive raaah-ness anyway? Did an android insult your mom?
Woah! Sorry to say, I can't keep other fanbois (or fangrrlz in my case) under control. I *think* they're all individual and whatnot.
As for your first sentence, I can't seem to kae heads or tails of it. Is "loudmouth idiot" the term for a group of things? Like a shoal of fish? In which case, they aren't *my* idiot of fanbois.
I don't recall insulting your family or yourself. I suppose it's hard to when chatting to anonymous folk. Just in case though, I'm sorry I -and my loudmouth idiot of fanbois- insulted your mom.
It seems you do her disservice enough.
I can't figure out what "I can't seem to kae heads or tails" means either, what exactly are you trying to do with with your head or tail? Is it related to kainate receptors? If so I'm totally into it.
Now what's wrong with you lot to keep bringing personal matters into these discussions? Seriously, what fucking personality trait do you have that you can't just discuss technical things with technical arguments?
Seems to be a really common affliction in your group, so I would reconsider that "they're all individuals" line. Maybe it's related to those illegal drugs Google was peddling. Have you been clicking in their pharmacy ads by any chance?
Handbags at dawn, ladies!
Seriously, get over yourselves - are you 12? If you are, kindly suggest to Mummy and/or Daddy that they've probably got more important things to spend money on.
Back on topic... I've noticed some serious Archos lovin' going on at TheRegister. Reviews of other devices have been marked down for having lower hardware spec or not including the Google apps. Yet when it comes to Archos devices these "issues" are barely mentioned.
256MB RAM is pretty pathetic - no matter how good Android is at memory management - and there's no word on whether it's a dual-core processor or what the internal storage space is like. If it's a single-core chip - which I suspect it is - it's going to look pretty weak against other budget tablets with dual-core Tegras. 800x480 screen resolution is smartphone territory and 720p video on a resolution that small is laughable - it might make things easier for consumers - less transcoding - but it's hardly worth crowing about when you can't actually display around 60% of the pixels being decoded. At least with a 1024x600 screen you're only losing around 40%.
As for Honeycomb minimum specs, Google haven't yet released any sort of "minimum specification" for Honeycomb and it's extremely unlikely that it will do so until it hits AOSP - which is miles away. This tablet might struggle under HC, with it's paltry RAM and presumably single-core processor, but there's no reason for not at least trying.
Sorry my other comment wasn't mean to you, I'm glad someone can have a tech talk here.
I agree, Archos seems to be "forgiven" much more for not including Google Apps. Although at the end of the day any such installations is a breach of Google's license and just like including a free pirate copy of MS Office on Windows computers. There should be no excuses for this and final score should reflect what the device can do without the apps.
I don't think Honeycomb is ever going AOSP, Google essentially said it themselves at I/O that only Ice Cream Sandwich would be open sourced.
And I think it's pretty good for the money. I bought it instead of a kindle because safari bookshelf doesn't play nicely with them. But actually, it's a whole lot more useful than that, and since the IPlayer app came out, I've even been watching a fair bit of telly on it.
Ok, so you have to mess about a little to get android market on it, but I'm a techie, so I'm not adverse to a noodle. Unlike all those iOS lusers...
well after a trip to Aintree best buy in scouserpool im seriously considering the Archos stuff (even if it is French) the trouble is im not sure if i should get the 10in screen or the 7in! im thinking of using it to read Comic Book archives so a big screen would be good, the connectivity options look excellent too. its something to have a mess about with too! id like to fumble in androids nether bits more
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