Archos 50 Diamond smartphone and Helium 4G tablets revealed

It can be difficult for some companies to get their products noticed at a huge technology show like CES, particularly when they are aimed at more budget-conscious users rather than the top-end of the market. That’s why Archos has made its CES 2015 reveals ahead of schedule, announcing a trio of budget 4G tablets and a new smartphone ahead of the show kicking off on Monday.

First up, the 50 Diamond smartphone, which based on specifications alone looks like a promising mid-range handset. It has a 5in, Full HD 1080p display, 16-megapixel rear camera, 8-megapixel front camera, dual SIM card slots, Category 4 4G LTE, a microSD card slot in addition to 16GB of onboard storage and a 2,700mAh battery in a body that’s just 8mm thick. Inside, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 CPU and 2GB of RAM should be able to handle pretty much any standard Android app or game, if not at quite the same speeds as the flagship 800-series chipsets.

The Helium 4G Tablet range, meanwhile, has been updated with the 70 Helium 4G, 80b Helium 4G and 101 Helium 4G. The 7in, 8in and 10in tablets all include dual-SIM 4G LTE wireless connectivity, which is still rare in budget-oriented tablets, but otherwise specifications are fairly middling. All three use a 1.5GHz MediaTek MT8732 processor and have just 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage. You do at least get a microSD card slot for adding extra capacity.

All three have 0.3-megapixel webcams on the front, and while the 10in model has a 5-megapixel rear camera the two smaller models make do with a limited 2-megapixel rear sensor. They do all have an LED flash, however, which is still rare on tablets. The 7in 70 Helium has a 1,024×600 resolution display and 2,500mAh battery, which gets bumped to 1,280×800 and 3,600mAh in the 80b Helium. The 101 Helium has the same resolution, but the battery increases again to 6,500mAh.

Unfortunately for Lollipop fans, all four new models are set to run Android 4.4 KitKat out of the box, although Archos promises it will be the stock experience, with no custom skins or overlays to slow down each device. That being said, the official 50 Diamond press images show the navigation buttons in a non-standard order – meaning there could be some customisation going on under the hood, or that Archos has simply used capacitive hardware keys rather than onscreen buttons.

There’s currently no official word on price or availability, but we expect that to change in the next few days. We’ll be dropping by the Archos booth here at CES 2015 later in the week, so if you’re after a low-cost smartphone or tablet be sure to check back for some early first impressions.