Smartphone Archos Diamond - advantages and disadvantages

Mobile market trends are constantly changing. Just last year, there was a fashion for "monobrows" and "bangs" on smartphones, but now manufacturers, on the contrary, are trying to get rid of them. One of the solutions was slider phones, in which there is only a speaker at the top of the front panel, and the front camera is located in the retractable back.

This technology was adopted by the French company Archos. And she implemented it in her new mid-range phone Archos Diamond, combining such absolute trends of this year as large frameless displays and tempered glass on both sides of the phone with slider technology.

The release of the phone is planned for May 2019, but for now you can consider what is already known about it, and there is already a lot of information about it. But first things first.

Design

As mentioned above, Archos decided to keep up with the trends, so the phone has a frameless display, which occupies 85.2%, which is 6.4 inches diagonally. At the top of the screen there is only a speaker, the camera slides out using a special mechanism created on the principle of a slider.

At the bottom there is a speaker, a TypeC connector for charging, as well as a 3.5 mm audio jack for connecting headphones, which, by the way, is also starting to go out of fashion.

On the left is a dual slot for a microSD card, and on the right is the traditional power button and volume rocker.

On the rear panel is a lonely camera with two sensors and LED backlight. The entire back, as well as the display, is covered with tempered glass Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

Display

One of the main advantages of this device is a huge AMOLED display with a capacitive touchscreen and color reproduction of 16 million colors. The screen resolution is 1080x2340 pixels with an aspect ratio of 19.5:9 with a pixel density per inch of 403.

The screen turned out to be really beautiful, and the lack of a bang or cutout only adds to its beauty. Of course, more detailed tests of brightness, color reproduction, white balance and other characteristics can only be carried out after the release of the phone, but judging by the available parameters, the display quality will be at a very high level.

Also worth mentioning is the very young technology of a fingerprint scanner built right into the display. Here it is also implemented and, hopefully, very successfully.

Specifications

CPU

The smartphone is powered by a new processor for the middle class, MediaTek Helio P70. Its capabilities were first demonstrated in an Oppo smartphone for the Indian market, Realmi U1.

This single-chip system has shown impressive results, beating the highly successful Snapdragon 660 mid-range chip in terms of performance.

The processor is based on the popular BIG technology. LITTLE, and like all SoCs created of this type, has a cluster of productive cores, which is represented by four Cortex A73 cores clocked at 2.1 GHz. It is responsible for performing complex computational operations, as well as launching and maintaining heavy applications.

The second cluster is usually called energy-saving, as it is responsible for keeping the smartphone running in idle mode, and it is on these cores that applications that do not require large powers are used. Such as social networks or the browser.Here it is represented by a cluster of 4 Cortex A53 cores with a frequency of 2.0 GHz.

Despite the fact that this chip successfully outperforms the Snapdragon 660, it was announced as a competitor to the Snapdragon 710, however, in order to identify a favorite in this category, detailed tests are needed, which are currently not available.

For this phone, such a chip is quite suitable, since its capabilities are enough to support a screen with FullHD + resolution with an aspect ratio of 20: 9, it can also work with dual-sensor cameras, with a resolution of 16 MP for the main sensor and 5 MP for the additional one.

It is also worth noting the presence of the MediaTek NeuroPilot neuroblock, thanks to which the built-in AI processes information when shooting 30% faster than the previous chip of the same series, and also adjusts the image quality itself during a dialogue in Skype or Discord.

The graphics accelerator Mali-G72 is responsible for the graphics in games, which is sharpened rather than for games, but for modeling virtual reality objects, interacting with AI and working with voice assistants.

Memory

According to the manufacturer, the new smartphone will have 128 GB of internal memory, which can be expanded thanks to a flash card with a maximum capacity of 512 GB.

4 GB of RAM is promised, which is not bad, but there are no details about its speed yet.

Camera

Main

The rear camera consists of two sensors:

• The main 16MP lens uses Sony optics, specifically the IMX499 optical sensor with f / 1.8 aperture and PDAF phase autofocus, the operating principle of which phone manufacturers borrowed from SLR cameras and adapted for smartphones.
• Secondary with a resolution of 5 MP and f / 2.2 aperture cutout.A special depth sensor is built into it, so apparently it will come in handy when creating photos with a blur effect, aka the Bokeh effect.

There are two LED lights below the camera for the flash.

In the software shooting settings, a panoramic mode and HDR settings are provided. In addition, do not forget about the capabilities of the processor, and specifically the built-in neuroblock, which can automatically correct images on the fly.

As for video recording, the specification indicates the ability to shoot in 1080p quality at 30 frames per second, other information is not yet available.

Frontal

The selfie camera is interesting primarily for its sliding mechanism, made in the style of a slider. Otherwise, this is a pretty average, albeit a good front-facing camera with a resolution of 8 MP and f / 2.0 aperture.

In the settings there is an HDR mode, in addition, it can also shoot video in FullHD resolution with the same frame rate as the main camera.

Operating system

It is known that the phone will be preinstalled with the latest version of Android 9.0, which has long become popular with its integrated machine learning technology, which allows you to automatically adapt battery consumption depending on the applications you run.

Also, the new gesture control system allows you to swipe from anywhere to open a list of recently used applications.

The new system allows you to set up reminders for popular applications, so that after a certain time the system will suggest using a notification, for example, to read a book or remind you of daily routines.

But the most discussed feature is user activity control.Thanks to a special application, you can set time limits on the use of applications or simply find out how much time a particular program takes.

No special features or additional applications are yet known.

Battery

Judging by the preliminary specification, the device will receive a Lithium-polymer battery with a capacity of 3400 mAh.

Despite the fact that this is a rather impressive battery, such a screen can consume a lot of energy, even if some of it is compensated by the Smart Battery system integrated into the new version of the OS.

Luckily, the power consumption of the processor is not too high, so you can safely predict a day of battery life, if you do not take into account games or other heavy applications.

Advantages and disadvantages

• The main advantage, of course, is the display, which, although it does not represent some kind of incredible innovation, nevertheless it is of sufficiently high quality, even better than that of the flagships;
• The design is also very good. Although the phone is a compilation of popular trends, it does not make it less beautiful. Tempered glass on both sides, a frameless screen, all this still attracts attention, although it cannot be said that it somehow stands out among other smartphones;
• Battery capacity is also a plus. Its capacity will be enough for long battery life, especially considering the power-saving properties of the processor and the smart battery mode built into the OS itself.

• The main camera promises to be pretty mediocre, especially when compared to top-end cameras that have 3 or more sensors;
• The front camera is also not particularly remarkable, despite the interesting solution with a retractable mechanism.

Conclusion and cost

As a result, we can say that the phone will turn out to be a good middling phone, combining almost all the most interesting things on the market, and the built-in NFC mode gives a big plus in its category.

It would also be interesting to see what the new processor from Mediatek is capable of, which the developers themselves dubbed the “Snapdragon 710 killer”. It is doubtful that they will be able to make a graphics accelerator better than Adreno, however, in terms of multi-threaded operation, it may well come out the winner.

Also, apparently, it is worth waiting for the appearance of even more sliders on the market, as this technology is rapidly gaining popularity.

With such a balance of advantages and disadvantages, this phone can be considered for purchase, especially considering that its promised price will not exceed 300 euros, which will undoubtedly allow you to close your eyes to some camera imperfections.