Hanover (Germany):
Archos, the media player manufacturing company from France showcased a new range of
Android run tablets and a colored
e-reader at the
CeBIT fair that started here yesterday. The
Archos 7ob e-reader and the Android tablets (8 inch) brand named
Arnova will be available in Europe for
$179.
The
Archos 7ob consists of a 7-inch LCD touchscreen with a resolution of 800X480 pixels. The device can be used to read e-books in PDF and EPUB formats. In addition to reading e-books, one can watch videos and hear audio content in the e-reader. Internet can be browsed with the help of Wi-Fi.
The e-reader ships with 4GB of memory. The memory can be enhanced through inserting memory cards in the SDHC memory card slot. The battery is claimed to be powerful by the company. Archos says that with one charge, the battery will support seven hours of video, ten hours of reading and about eight hours of internet browsing. Files can be transferred through the mini-USB port in the e-reader.
The two tablets released will be sold under brand name Arnova. The tablets have size of 8-inch and 10-inch resistive touchscreens. Both run on
Android 2.1 Eclair rather than the tablet optimized Android OS
Honeycomb. This is done, the company says, to keep the tablets in the lower end of the price spectrum and that it is not competing with the iPad or other high priced tablets.
Arnova 8 and
Arnova 10 come with 600MHz Rockchip RK2818 processor, but while the former has 4GB of storage, there is double storage (8GB) in the latter. The Arnova 10 will sell at $200.
