If you happen to own a Archos 101 XS tablet, then today is a good day. That’s because Archos has started rolling out updates to Android 4.1.1 to 101 XS users, so it shouldn’t be too much longer before you have Jelly Bean running on your tablet. No, it isn’t Android 4.2, but considering that this tablet has only been around for a few months, this is pretty great news.
Of course, this also means you get all of the benefits of Jelly Bean over Ice Cream Sandwich, which are plentiful. With this firmware release, Archos has also made an update to the Archos Video Player. Video information retrieval and media indexing have been simplified with this release, with Archos also implementing a new network shares infrastructure.
Moving forward, Archos says that “Archos Video, Music, File Manager, System Monitor applications (embedded in the firmware)” updates will be occurring through the Google Play Store. Other than Jelly Bean, the new features for the Archos video player, and the news about future firmware updates, there’s nothing more to see with this update. You’ll have plenty to do with Jelly Bean though, so we doubt users will mind the fact that there aren’t many additional features with this update.
When we reviewed the 101 XS back in August, we found that it was a pretty generic budget tablet but still a step in the right direction for Archos. This update to Jelly Bean makes the deal even sweeter, so if you’re looking for a wallet-friendly tablet that isn’t completely out of date, the XS 101 might be worthy of some attention. Have you already received your Jelly Bean update, or are you still waiting for it to arrive?
[via Archos]
Archos? Never again. Though I do have to give them credit. If it weren’t for their early Android tablets, there wouldn’t have been anything to inspire the iPad and the resulting Android tablets since.
I can’t even give them that much credit.. jus saying
And when do the earlier buyers of Archos tablets get any love? Still running extremely slow 2.2 Android here! It’s a shame, Archos. Also for me, never an Archos again.
Likely never, tho Gen9 (101,80) got a bump to 4.0.4 soon after the 101XS was released. Will be interesting to see if they also get a 4.1 bump soon.
Edit: best i can tell the Gen8 devices do not have the hardware requirements that Google has laid out for 4.x in their CCD.
http://source.android.com/compatibility/downloads.html
The Minimum RAM on 4.x devices are 340MB for instance. And best i can tell the Gen8 range has only 256MB.
So while Archos could try to provide a 4.x update, they would be unable to bundle Google Play and such even if they did manage to shoehorn Android in there. And even then it would be unlikely to run much more than bare Android…
Your only option now is to see if you can find a good ROM for it. The problem is that these things don’t really get any “mainstream” dev support so good ROMs are hard to find.