The ARCHOS 5 IT for 1€ : What it’s all about (english)

Ces informations étant parues en exclusivité mondiale, Frandroid se devait de réaliser la traduction de cet article.

On November 6, 2009 we announced an exceptional offer made by the manufacturer ARCHOS in order to promote the publication of applications on their own marketplace style store appslib.com.

This message brought in a lot of questions and remarks and in this post we’ll try to respond to all of them.

Why didn’t ARCHOS announce this on the appslib ? Is this program for real?

Yes, this is a real contest that ARCHOS has launched, and is not just something dreamed up by Frandroid : )  Somebody from the Frandroid team has a contact inside of ARCHOS and got the permission to post this information exclusively on Frandroid. The full offer will be detailed with all the conditions no later than the afternoon of Friday the 13th of November.

What are the start and end dates of the program ?

The program officially started on the 6th of November with the publication of the article on Frandroid. It  will end at the very end of November.  Therefore, the applications have to be published at the very latest on the 30^th at 23h59m59sec !

What’s the process for taking part in this program ?

• publish one or multiple applications on the AppsLib (publishing requires the creation of a free developer account if you don’t already have one)
• Each application will be tested by ARCHOS to validate that the application is indeed functioning correctly (see the following question)
• Once the application is validated (count at least 15 days – ARCHOS didn’t seem to increase their human resources for this program), you’ll receive a code for a 228€ (vat included) reduction that is valid only on the ARCHOS web store www.archos.com.  Be careful to verify the delivery zones.  The country list is shown on AppsLib (pretty much all of Europe, the United States, etc.).
• The 228€ reduction code will be applicable to the entire range of ARCHOS 5  Internet Tablets. Models like the 8GB and 16GB won’t be available until the beginning of 2010, but the reduction code will still be valid.

If you haven’t heard from ARCHOS within 3 weeks of submitting your application, it is most likely because your application had a problem while running. Don’t bother trying to contact ARCHOS to get information about what problems your application had, rather politely ask someone on the forum if they wouldn’t mind testing your application on a real ARCHOS 5 IT.

What do you mean by valid ?  My application calls on Google Maps or the vibration module. Will the application work on the ARCHOS?

The application has to function 100% on the hardware of ARCHOS. The ARCHOS 5 IT does not have the following hardware or software APIs. The use of which would, of course, make your application not functional:

• No Google APIs (Google Mail, Google Maps) but solutions do exist such as webview which calls the web APIs : )
• No digital camera unit
• No vibration unit
• No GSM telephone function
• SDK 1.5 : Even if Google has gone crazy quickly releasing SDK 1.6 and then 2.0, manufacturers are having some difficulties following – even though ARCHOS is working to follow the evolution of the SDKs, currently the applications that are to be developed will have to be with the version 1.5 SDK.  If you have applications developed with 1.6, try downgrading them to 1.5.

The application must be optimized for the device’s 800×480 screen and must be politically correct (ARCHOS will apply the same rules of validation that the Android Market place uses concerning applications that might be considered pornographic, racist, etc.)

The application has to be a real program or real widget. The application that just shows a screen “Hello World” would certainly not be considered. We’re talking about a real application, not a test attempt.

If I publish multiple applications, will I get multiple reduction codes ?

Of course not (ARCHOS is being nice, but let’s not be unrealistic!). Only one application will be taken into account per developer for the discount with the postal address being taken into account as well.

If it is not possible for me to post my application on AppsLib, what can I do ?

After the program announcement, the ARCHOS servers encountered some problems. Everything has been corrected and all the applications have been posted on the AppsLib.  In any case, if you have problems posting your app, please don’t hesitate to contact us.