ARCHOS, a French electronics company, has introduced the Saphir 50X, a low-end Android smartphone with a ruggedized body built for the outdoor where the physical conditions can be quite tough for an electronics product. The Saphir 50X has been developed with sports-oriented users in mind, perhaps, as evidenced by its IP 68 rating for a resistant casing that can withstand drops of up to a meter, exposures to dust, water immersion for up to half an hour at the maximum, and temperatures ranging from -20 degrees Celsius to 55 degrees Celsius.
The smartphone sports a 5-inch IPS HD display and is powered by a Mediatek Quad-core processor coupled with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage that is expandable up to 64GB via a microSD card. The handset runs Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box, though it remains unknown whether ARCHOS plans to upgrade the device to Android 8.0 Oreo in the future. The phone boasts a 13-megapixel rear camera with autofocus and LED flash as well as a 5-megapixel front sensor. It’s easy to understand why the ARCHOS Saphir 50X belongs to the low-end category of smartphones given its low-end spec sheet as well. However, its main selling point, perhaps, is its impressive battery of a 4000 mAh, which is supposedly capable of keeping the phone running for 375 hours in standby mode or 470 minutes of video playback. The ARCHOS Saphir 50X is now available to purchase in Europe for €149.99, though there’s no word on when it will be rolled out to the other markets, if at all.
ARCHOS recently unveiled four smartphones with a more decent spec sheet in June last year, with two of the device lineup belonging to the company’s ‘Diamond’ line consisting of the Diamond Alpha and Diamond Gamma, while the other two are members of the ‘Sense’ line of smartphones comprised of the Sense 55s and the Sense 50x. The company’s most recent device, the Diamond Omega, was unveiled in October last year as a rebranding of the Nubia Z17S. It came as no surprise then that the Diamond Omega has generally the same design and hardware specs as the Chinese tech company’s smartphone product.
