The Mifi is a great solution for bringing a WiFi hotspot with you everywhere in the city and even in the country (depending on HSDPA/UMTS/GPRS coverage in your country). It’s perfect to add 3G connectivity to your Archos, Laptops and any other WiFi-only devices that you may have. In this video, I compare the performance and features of the two Mifi adapters that are available on the market, the Novatel Wireless Mifi 2352 and the Huawei e5830.
In this video, I demonstrate a VOIP call taken using Google Voice and Gizmo5 on my $249 Archos 5 Internet Tablet using SIPdroid or any other SIP VOIP applications on the Android OS (discuss the best VOIP apps for Android in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=33296). This is the vision where you just need a pre-paid 1GB or 10GB of bandwidth per month on a SIM card, just enter it in your unlocked Mifi device, make sure the right profile informations are entered using the control panel and that’s it. You’ve just about got a full mobile phone replacement, but where you don’t need to pay for voice minutes and SMS subscriptions any more.
Although eventually all devices will have built-in unlocked SIM card slots and modems, the Mifi solution is a really great temporary alternative, that connects on 3G all WiFi-only devices. When your city gets White Spaces, LTE or WiMax, you don’t need to buy new devices, just buy a new Mifi.
If you travel a lot in Europe, this is a must have. Then find SIM cards for cheap pre-paid plans, for 5€ to 10€ and get Mifi internet access all over that city and country.
The Novatel Wireless Mifi 2352 that I got was unlocked beforehand, I don’t know if there are online programs to unlock one if you happen to have a locked one. It can be bought unlocked for 214€ at moblix.hu and expansys.com.
I bought the Huawei e5830 at the Three store in London for £49 with a compulsory £10 1GB/month first month pre-paid credit. I then unlocked it for 15€ using http://www.dc-unlocker.com/ (it can also be bought internationally from ebay.co.uk for around £80 unlocked) and I installed the latest firmware with full Control Panel, built-in Profile and other Router management features at: http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=98318&page=2
We are proud to be the first ones to have a public preview of Android 2.0 on 7th generation Archos devices (Archos5IT).
Mind you, this is not an Archos build and none of the multimedia functionality would work right now. It just shows that even with the current 2.6.27.10 Linux kernel the device is able to boot an Android 2.0 user-space and bring up the UI. I’ll repeat this. If Archos releases an Android 2.0 firmware it will be very much different!
Given the ease with which I was able to modify an existing build of Android 2.0 to run on my device and get rid of most of the error messages – I have to say I have no idea why nobody else has done this yet. But this is kind of symptomatic for the Archos “community”. The loudest to cry out and demand but no one is even able to get their behind up and try it themselves. It took me less than an hour to have the GUI up and running.
One major downside at the moment is that the touchscreen driver is not cooperating. If someone wants to help and try to make it work – please contact dm8tbr.
Jack Bauer is using an Archos to play the video evidence in the latest episode of US TV show 24:
You can watch an animated gif showing one of the parts where the Archos is used in the episode at: http://i42.tinypic.com/jh8toz.gif (9mb)
Thanks to forum user yardie4life for posting these.
The Archos is used a bit in the opening credits of 24 Season 8 Episode 21 and again towards the end of the episode, when he shows the evidence to the journalist. The Archos logo is hidden (Archos can’t afford such product placement), and it seems they make it look like it has an SD card reader on top, when in fact it only has a MicroSD card reader underneath.
Here is Archos new 4.3″ Vision line for bringing a cheap basic PMP to the market. Posted by cajl at JBMM.fr.
It comes with the Rockchip RK2706 processor, a 4.3″ basic 480×272 LCD touch screen with touch screen basic PMP interfaces, TV output support on the mini-jack, supports basically all video and audio formats for free without the need to buy plugins. 8GB flash storage is built-in with MicroSD card slot.
Most importantly the Archos 43 Vision is to be sold between 99€ and 129€ in European countries, my guess between $99 and $129 in the USA. Prices to be confirmed. No WiFi, no Android, that’s why it’s so cheap.
I previously posted a video overview of a pre-production unit of this device, but that was using an unfinished user interface. Now the user interface has been made cleaner and simpler to use, I’ll post a new video if I get one of these devices to review.
Although this is currently yet just a proof of concept, dm8tbr of OpenAOS.org is reporting on this Archos Fans Forum thread that Maemo/Mer is now bootable on Archos 5 Internet Tablet and Archos 5 Internet Media Tablet as you can see in these videos:
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