A quality sub-£200 phone, with farm more expensive features
There are numerous mid-range smartphones available at present, finding one that manages to offer close to top of the range features at decent price can be quite difficult, though. Archos has, in the past, tried to bridge the gap between mid- and top-of-the-range with its products; offering good value for money with functional hardware.
The Archos 50 Diamond is another such smartphone, that has had a lot of attention since the company revealed it at the CES. It’s not difficult to see why either; with a 5" full HD IPS screen, Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 Octa-Core A53 processor running at 1.5GHz – the industry’s first ever 64-bit chipset – an Adreno 405 550MHz GPU, 2GB of LPDDR3 RAM, 16GB of internal storage and running Android 4.4.4 Kitkat, this is a phone that throws down the challenge to other handsets.
In addition to that little lot, Archos has also squeezed into the thin frame of the 50 Diamond a pair of micro SIMs, 4G, 3G, NFC, Bluetooth, a 16MP rear camera, an 8MP front camera and micro USB. The 2700 mAh battery is similarly good, lasting a couple of days with light use and an excellent seven and half hours under heavy use (games, videos, browsing and so on).
The build quality is good allround. It’s plastic throughout, but it doesn’t feel cheaply made or lacking in any respect. It’s a good weight too, at 140g, and is only about 8mm thick. One thing we weren’t too sure over was the chosen colour scheme on the model we had to test. Hopefully there’ll be the opportunity to pick a different colour, as lime green (or whatever it’s supposed to be), wouldn’t be our first choice. Still, it’s certainly eye-catching.
The 16 megapixel camera is simply superb and captures high details in low light levels as well as producing some excellent colours. It’s hard to fault it, but if there one thing we would improve it would be speed at which it takes a picture. It certainly seems a little slow compared to the likes of a Samsung S5 mini or a Lumia 930 for example.
Android 4.4.4 runs perfectly well on the 50 Diamond. The response of the screen is good, with very little lag to show; at least as the untrained eye can discern anyway. The combination of Snapdragon CPU and Adreno GPU does a good job of keeping the performance up to scratch too. Our CPU-killing Bloons Tower Defence 5 test ran well, but there’s only so much a sub-£200 phone can handle before the seams begin to tear.
The Archos 50 Diamond is a really good mid-range smartphone. The company has done a great job of cramming it full of worthy features while still keeping the price lower than the competition with similar specifications. David Hayward
A great smartphone with plenty going for it.
Features
• Compatible with 4G / LTE download speeds
• 5.0'' Full HD IPS display
• Snapdragon Octa-Core processor
• 16MP low light back camera
• Dual SIM placement