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Overall Interface (6.50)
For the most part, the Archos 5's software is intuitive and easy to use. The interface consists of a series of lists. While navigation is rather simple, we did have a few problems. First of all, the touch navigation is sometimes jerky or unresponsive. Secondly, the listed items all receive the same odd highlighting, where the top half of the list item is solidly light and the bottom half is solidly dark. There's no gradation in between. Our eyes often got lost during navigation, since we're used to alternating black and white backgrounds to each represent individual menu items.
Again, we have a pre-production unit. Some of these issues may be fixed before launch, or fixed in a later firmware update.
It's a bit easy to get lost in all the horizontal lines.
Personal Information Management
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You'll find your contact list under the Internet tab, which doesn't really make sense.
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Address Book (9.90)
The Archos 5 includes a Contact application, oddly located in the Internet folder. At the time of this review, it's a beta version of the application. You can enter a good deal of information for each contact, with the intial screen prompting you for a nickname, first name, last name, company, phone number, email address, web site, IM handle, full address, a note, and two dates for corresponding note fields. There are plus signs next to every field except for the 2 date fields allowing you to add multiple entries for each field type. One odd thing about the application is that you must designate a nickname for each contact before it can be saved, and it won't automatically pull what you've filled in for the First Name and/or Last name - you'll keep getting an error message if you try to save it without it. We've never seen another contact application on a media device do this and don't like this strange requirement at all.
You can designate only one of two groups for each contact: Professional or Personal. Once you've done this, you can choose to filter your entire contacts list using these groups. The default group for every new contact is Professional, which is unexpected and inappropriate for a device that is not likely to be the primary tool for a business user to keep track of contacts.
Again, we know this is a beta software, but there's another annoying feature in this application - if you create a contact and then use the "back" button in the top right to go back to the previous screen, you are not offered an option to save the contact you just created. At the very least, the back button should prompt a save or cancel dialogue if any changes have been made in a new contact form.
When you create a new contact and enter the nickname, first, and last name, the keyboard does not default to capital letters for the first letter of each field. This works if you're impersonating e.e. cumming, but we think it's safe to say that most users of the Archos 5 will not be attempting this. A similar thing happens when you're entering a phone number - the keyboard defaults to the lower case alphabet, from entry is not allowed in a phone number field. You must hit the Alt key to get to number entry. Overall, data entry on the Archos 5 is clunky, at best.
You can import and export contacts in the v-card format. Exported contacts are saved to the Data folder on the device and can be transferred to your computer via the included USB cable. The Archos 5 does not sync with Outlook on a PC or Address Book on a Mac, so managing your contacts on the Archos will be pretty manual and probably won't be your primary contacts storage medium.
Calendar (0.0)
The Archos 5 does not have a built-in calendar application.
Todo Lists (0.0)
The Archos 5 does not have a built-in to-do application.
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The keyboard isn't quite as good as the on-screen QWERTY the iPod Touch or iPhone have. The app is a bit unresponsive at times and there's no predictive text. |
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Memos & Other Documents (5.00)
The Archos has a notes application in the Tools/Widgets menu. This application allows the entry of text notes to keep track of whatever your little heart desires. Entry is limited to alphanumeric text and symbols present on the keyboard - no freehand drawing on the touch screen is possible. Saved notes show up in list format by the date of creation, and there are no options to sort or change this view, nor to search through notes. As with text entry in the Address Book, the on-screen keyboard does not automatically activate the shift key for you to automatically capitalize the first letter of a new sentence. There's also no predictive text or word completion to speak of, so this notes widget is best reserved for short notes where correct capitalization and punctuation is not important.
There is a PDF reader in the Tools menu that provides simple view-only functionality. The Archos 5 did not do well with one of the test files we loaded, distorting the graphics somewhat on a single-page PDF containing images and text. On the other hand, the PDF Reader did just fine with a long PDF file with a hyperlinked table of contents, texts, and small graphics.
The PDF reader does not have the greatest navigation. Once you're in a PDF, there's no way to back out of it straight to the full list of PDF documents. Pressing the back arrow takes you back to the home screen, as does the home button in the top left. This is fine if you tend to browse one PDF document at a time. If you plan to use the Archos 5 as a portable PDF-reading device, you'll want to wait and see if this UI issue gets patched.
This is the PDF viewer in action.
UPDATE: Pressing the back arrow will now quit back to the PDF selection screen. You still might run into some graphics or layout issues, however, and the loading times from page to page can substantial in larger documents. One thing we also must stress is that the Archos 5 is one of only a few devices that even supports PDF files. Although it's not going to replace your BlackBerry any time soon, this is still great functionality on a media player.
Games (6.00)
The Archos 5 comes with a number of free games. There are classics like Solitaire and Mahjong, a few sports games (golf, basketball, hockey), a few puzzle games, and a few platformers. We played through a few of them, and found they're about on par with other mobile device games. The one issue we ran into was that the controls were sometimes unresponsive. Fortunately, even the action-based games are a bit forgiving in that regard, so hopefully the touch screen will only be a minor annoyance at best.
There will be an option to download other games at some point in the future. We'll update this review when that happens.
Based on other interface navigation, you might try to tap and drag to scroll
through games. Don't, because you'll open up this grumpy alien game and
then have to sit through its intro before you can quit out.
Extensibility (2.00)
The Archos 5 is almost annoyingly extensible. There are several menu items that simply link to a brief video outlining all the cool stuff your Archos 5 could do if only you bought the DVR dock or the TV tuner attachment. We definitely like how there's a ton of add-ons for the device, but the device itself just feels incomplete as it is. The TV menu item can be opened, and you can check out the programs you haven't been able to record since you lack the peripherals to do so, which is depressing. We understand the TV feature is important (given the additional hardware investment), but we really wish it could've gotten stuck in the Add-Ons folder, if only initially.
Regardless of the Archos 5 guilting us into more purchases, there really is a lot of stuff you can do with this device. It all comes at an additional cost, however, and most of these upgrades involve additional hardware. Really, the best comparison for the Archos 5 is the original iPhone, if the original iPhone could be upgraded to the iPhone 3G by strapping on additional bits. For a media player, it's absurdly extensible -- but it'll cost you.
At the moment, the software extensibility features aren't live. We'll come back around and rescore when they are.
Look at all the potential you're wasting.
Other Features (5.30)
The Archos also have a bunch of widgets included that are varying degrees of useful. There's a calculator, some converters, an RSS reader, a mobile version of Opera, a weather app, a password storage feature, and a folder for Flash apps. This is a really nice set of extras.
The browser interface is slightly anemic, but it'll get the job done.
This is the on-board mail client, which supports IMAP and POP.
Here's the file browser, which Mac-users will recognize as similar to the Finder's column view.
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