ARCHOS is coming up with Helium Plus model, an upgrade to their Helium entry level smartphones.

The new ARCHOS 50 and 55 Helium Plus devices both run on Android 5.1 Lollipop, support 4G LTE dual SIM connectivity, offer a 720p HD IPS display, a quad-core 64-bit Mediatek MT6735P SoC with 1GB of RAM, 8 GB internal storage and cameras of 5mp (front) 13mp (back)

The Helium Plus range will be offered in black and white colors.

There is some design inspiration from iPhone devices but the phone body is actually based on glossy plastic.

Both 50 and 55 Helium Plus models share a similar body with some slight differences: the 55 is a bit slimmer (by 1 mm). They both offer 3 physical touch-sensitive buttons for the Recents, Home and Back Android functions: on the 50 model the function signs are visible all the time on the phone body itself, on the other hand for the 55 model there are no functions indication and these are shown from a backlight which fires only when a button is touched. The ARCHOS 50 Diamond was designed the same way and we found it a bit inconvenient.

The 50 and 55 Helium Plus phones will be available in black and white colors in July at at their respective prices of €129.99 / £119 and 149.99 € / £139.  On the French market, a special 30 euros cashback offer should apply for both 50 and 55 Helium models at launch, with a device price coming down to €99.99 and €119.99 respectively.

On paper, the Helium Plus seem to be a very attractive offer for the price, we will have to see how they perform with battery management (do they last more than a day with moderate usage ?) and if the system runs smoothly with the limited RAM (that was a bit of an issue on some models from the previous Helium line)

ARCHOS 50 and 55 Helium plus specifications