The new Archos 80 G9 and Archos 101 G9 tablets will sport Android 3.1, 8- and 10.1-inch screen sizes, 1.5 GHz processors - and hard drives.
Device maker Archos unveiled its the Archos 80 G9 and the Archos 101 G9 in Paris today, the company’s latest Android tablet offerings. Clearly aimed at digital media and entertainment fans, the main distinction between the G9 tablets is their screen size: the 80 sports an 8-inch 1.024 by 768-pixel display, while the 101 kicks out to 1,280 by 800 pixels and (you guessed it) 10.1 inches.
Under the hood, both G9 tablets offer a dual-core OMAP 4 (ARM Cortex A9) processors running at 1.5 GHz, which makes the devices some of the more-powerful Android devices announced to date. The G9's will also sport the tablet-optimized Android 3.1 Honeycomb, and sport HDMI output with 1080p media playback. And users will be able to pack a lot of media onto the devices, since they rely on new 250 GB 7mm super-slim hard drives from Seagate rather than flash storage: Seagate claims the drives put 250 GB of storage in customers’ hands at the price of 32 GB of flash. The move also makes the Archos G9's the first handheld tablet computers with hard drives.
The G9 tablets also offer 802.11 Wi-Fi, support for Adobe Flash and the Android Market, along with a full-sized USB port—Archos is also touting a new G9 3G WWAN stick that will offer pay-as-you-go 3G mobile broadband access.
Archos says the G9 tablets will be available at the end of September, with tha Archos 80 G9 going for $279 and the Archos 101 G9 carrying a $349 price tag. The optional G9 3G WWAN Stick will be on sale for another $49.