Just when the naysayers were starting to question the ageing mantra "Army of Android-based tablets just around the corner, here we go, any minute now," Archos unveils its own private legion of the little mechanoid critters.
Looking at the baby of the group, the Archos 28 (named after its 2.8" screen), I couldn't help wondering why anyone would buy this instead of simply signing up for an Android-based phone - which would have the added benefit of, well, being a phone. But then I saw the price, a mere $99 (or £99 in the UK, given Archos' creative currency conversion). The ickle-bickle Archos 28 is dubbed a "pocket tablet": so that'll be a PDA, then?
But the real excitement kicks in with the 7" and 10.1" devices, dubbed "internet tablet" and "Connected Android tablet" respectively. Now we're heavily into IPad territory.
Historically, Archos has had mixed reports when it comes to build quality, but the prevailing opinion appears to be that their devices are solidly built.
In the meantime Samsung has unveiled the Galaxy Tab, at the IFA Conference in Berlin. In one sense I'm thinking "Ooh, looks just like an ipad." In another sense I'm thinking "No sir, I don't like it." Perhaps it's because the ipad never really appealed to me (from its DRM-mandated ebooks and walled-garden apps approach inherited from the iphone little daddy, to its looks, which I just thought were a bit "blah". Beauty, beholder and all that).
But the point really is that, despite wrongheaded suggestions to the contrary, the Android army could just be unstoppable - in both phone and tablet form factors.
It makes we wonder how Google's Chrome OS will fare, seeing as it's meant to fill the "super-phone/sub-PC, network-hungry" space; and yet Android really is the perfect tablet OS. A "small" OS growing into a slightly larger device works much better than a "fat" OS like XP/Vista/7 being squeezed down. It also says a lot for Linux's versatility, of course.
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