When it comes to smartphones, hugs and all-you-can-eat buffets, more is better, right? That’s why we had to sit down and play with Archos’ 50c Oxygen. The gassy, Jelly Bean-running handset is one of the first to use MediaTek’s 1.7GHz octa-core MT6592 CPU, housed behind a 5-inch 1,280 x 720 IPS LCD display. Archos has found room for dual-SIM slots, 1GB RAM, 8GB of onboard storage and a microSD card slot, while the 2,000mAh battery should last you at least a day.
Aside from the thinness of the device, some of the design cues, like the light-up strip for the menu buttons, reminded us a little of Sony’s old Xperia handsets, which we always had a soft spot for. Being a budget device, alas, there’s no LTE modem, and instead users will be forced to suck down data on HSPA+. Of course, the star here is the CPU, and while we weren’t able to put this device through the normal barrage of benchmarks that we use in our reviews, a casual run-through revealed that it was a lot more responsive than other devices that we’ve seen at this price. The 50c Oxygen will launch in April, around the same time as its phablet-sized brother, priced at €230 ($320).
Sharif Sakr swore off the all-you-can-eat buffet during this report.
Filed under: Cellphones
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