What if the Archos 604 personal media player had been symmetrical? I know that’s the first thing I wished it had been when it was launched. Technical considerations aside –  Would it had been more appealing?

I decided to play with this idea after writing my post on symmetry in portable consumer electronics. In my opinion, a great number of devices released in the last few years would have greatly benefited from some slight cosmetic changes. And so, taking into account symmetry amongst other factors I came up with the slimmer Archos unit you see above. The idea wasn’t to drastically change every aspect of the original unit, but to make smaller changes which would have been possible at the time of the unit’s design.

In this particular case, having seen the 604’s internals I am pretty sure the shape I’m proposing would have been possible back then. It would have certainly raised the unit’s price, but it would have been possible. Besides making the unit slimmer, I rearranged the controls and relocated the indicator lights, centering these along the unit’s center. I also relocated the Archos logo.

What could have been gained by all this? You would have had a much cleaner looking device which is easier to recognize. You would have had a shape which could have been iconic for your brand. If used accross the board, this shape could have been appropriated by Archos, in the same way that Apple appropriated the simple geometric arrangement which results in the iPod’s shape. And people would have associated said shape with your device anywhere they saw it. 

Here’s an interesting coincidence. The general arrangement of elements in the Archos I propose happens to coincide with an as-of-yet unreleased device, the iRiver Spinn. Even though the years between these two devices allow the Spinn to be lighter, thinner, and possess a superior interface, I believe it is a good indicator that Archos would have had something special in their hands had they done something along these lines back in 2006.