Known for putting out affordable handsets, French phone manufacturer Archos wasted no time in unveiling the 50 Saphir, the company’s latest rugged handset.
At first (and second, and third, and fourth) blush, the 50 Saphir will not win any design awards. However, part of the goal is to give the phone IP68 certification, which makes the 50 Saphir dust-resistant and allows the phone to remain underwater for up to 30 minutes. Furthermore, the design allows the phone to withstand drops from almost 3 1/2 feet, though the exterior might let you think it can withstand drops from a higher altitude.
Elsewhere, the 50 Saphir is a bit more typical, with a 5-inch, 1,280-by-720 resolution display on the front, a 5-megapixel selfie camera above it, and a 13MP sensor around back. Under the hood, a 1.5GHz quad-core MediaTek MTK6737 chipset and 2GB RAM power the 50 Saphir, with the 16GB of native storage expandable by up to 128GB through the MicroSD card slot.
Keeping the lights on is the phone’s second major feature: its gargantuan 5,000mAh battery. According to Archos, the size is large enough to get users through two days of usage, though the company did not say how it arrived at such a metric. Regardless, the huge battery is more than enough to get you through the day and then some.
Finally, the 50 Saphir comes with an almost-stock version of Android Marshmallow out of the box, though there is no word as to whether the phone will receive an update to Nougat in the near future.
As for when you can get your hands on the 50 Saphir, Archos will launch the phone in Europe for 199 euros ($222). It is unknown whether the phone will launch in other territories, though we would not hold our breath.
