The least powerful of Archos’s MWC troublesome trio, the 40b Titanium is small in size but offers some respectable features within.

The headline feature that Archos is singing about is music. The 40b Titanium packs dual front facing speakers for the music enthusiasts, in an otherwise budget-spec handset.

For £99.99 ($165, around AU $185) it’s a fairly respectable package, although design-wise there’s little to be excited about when you pick up the 40b Titanium.

The 4-inch 480×800 display looked grainy and washed out, but chances are you won’t be doing much video watching on this phone anyway.

Android 4.2 isn’t going to impress either, with 4.4 appearing on a number of handsets at this year’s Barcelona show, but it’s not exactly a deal breaker for a phone of this calibre.

A 5MP camera adorns the back – not too shabby, all things considered – and you’ve got a budget-level VGA on the front.

Doing the legwork on the inside is a 1.3GHz processor and 512MB of RAM – all you’ll really need to power a phone of this level sufficiently. However the slowdown when trying to move quickly between apps was noticeable.

It was less easy to determine the quality of those speakers on the noisy MWC showfloor, but they definitely seemed to pack a punch when it came to volume. You’ll have to wait until we can put them through their proper paces before we can deliver a full verdict.

For a phone aimed at the music enthusiast, you’d expect Archos to pack in a decent amount of space for all those tunes. Unfortunately you’ll only be getting 4GB inside, which seems a bit silly, though that’s expandable with the microSD slot.

Early verdict

The Archos 40b Titanium might not have too much to boast about in the hardware, but if you’re a music lover on a budget, this could be just the ticket. That price tag is certainly music to our ears.

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