Hasta La Gadget!

4K TV, Windows tableteering, segment straddling smartphones, and cross-company sniping: another year, another IFA. We’ve seen the show coalesce around a few key themes before, and 2012 proved no different, as manufacturers took a suck-it-and-see strategy to try to cash in on holiday hardware sales. As always, the specter of Apple loomed heavy, despite the Cupertino firm’s resolute absence. Read on for the highlights of IFA 2012.

Windows tablets have been the weeds of IFA, springing up just about everywhere you looked. Samsung, Dell, Sony, and others each brought along their interpretation of an iPad-rivaling, usually keyboard-toting slate, with sometimes multiple models – often split between Windows 8 and Windows RT – from individual firms.

It’s a strong showing of support out of the gate for Microsoft, certainly, though with just about all of the hardware left unpriced (and with release dates generally vague) there’s really no telling whether any of the models will be competitive. That’s even before you get to quite how practical some of the hardware itself is; just because a tablet has a keyboard, it doesn’t make it the perfect hybrid of notebook and slate.

In contrast there was only one “phablet” at IFA, but Samsung’s Galaxy Note II is arguably more compelling than any of the Windows touchscreen models shown. If the original Note, announced a year ago at IFA 2011, was a tentative step into a new market, then the Note II is an altogether more confident product. Samsung, buoyed by widespread popular response to the idea of a sizable, pen-enabled smartphone and rewarded by surprisingly strong sales, has come up with a more refined product that doesn’t stint where it’s most important: software.

“Too often we’ve seen great hardware let down by sloppy software”

Too often we’ve seen great hardware ideas let down by sloppy or simply absent software support, but that’s not a fate destined for the Note II. Samsung has continued to polish its stylus experience, signing up compelling names like Moleskine in the process, and giving Galaxy Note II buyers not only a good reason to pick up the phablet on day one, but to keep using it in the months after.

Check out our hands-on with the Galaxy Note II for more details!

Big screens weren’t limited to phones. 4K TVs, promising resolution four times that of regular HD, made themselves known at IFA this year, and while they’re still targeting the richest living rooms, basking in their extra detail is enough to convince where 3D might still leave you cold. Where Samsung could flesh out the Note II with its own suite of functionality, however, the TV industry is stuck waiting for 4K content to proliferate. Right now, it’s a case of resolution oneupmanship; more boastful than truly beneficial.

It’s also been a show of jostling and sniping, as companies in an increasingly litigious and competitive marketplace jostle for position. Samsung CEO JK Shin got the ball rolling, obliquely describing courtroom rival Apple as a “hindrance” that the company would be sure to overcome. (Apple snapped back by adding the Galaxy S III and other recent devices to the list of devices it hopes to eject from stores.) Lenovo’s EMEA chief Gianfranco Lanci was somewhat more sanguine about Microsoft’s Surface and its potential for undermining the company’s own ThinkPad Tablet 2, suggesting the own-brand slate was “very welcome” and acted as “a good advert for us.”

Welcoming competition is all IFA’s starlets can really do. With several weeks of high-profile launches ahead – including Nokia’s new Windows Phone 8 range, Amazon’s Kindle refresh, and of course the inescapable iPhone 5 – the Berlin show was an opportunity to get in early with headlines, if not actual sales. How many of the products of the past week will be remembered when the dust settles at the end of September remains to be seen.

You can find all our IFA 2012 coverage in the show hub!

Messe Berlin subsidized SlashGear’s trip to IFA, contributing to airfare and accommodation costs. No requirements, guidelines or expectations were placed on coverage or content, and Messe Berlin had no involvement in our editorial processes.

IFA 2012: Note II, 4K TV, Windows wobbles and more is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Windows 8 notebooks and tablets have come in all form-factors at IFA, but Dell’s XPS 12 Duo is – with its rotating display – perhaps the most eye-catching of the bunch. Dell kept the 12-inch ultrabook behind glass after its initial launch, but we caught up with the company for some hands-on playtime. The takeaway is simple: the XPS 12 Duo takes the concept of the old Inspiron Duo and polishes it to the point where it’s ready for primetime. Read on for our first impressions.

Where other Windows 8 tablets go for the docking-slate approach, pairing a lightweight tablet with a removable keyboard, the XPS 12 Duo is a full ultrabook that can double as a tablet with the flip of a screen. The original Inspiron Duo was a great idea but poor in delivery: it was too thick, underpowered, ran an OS that wasn’t ready for touchscreen use, and had too small a display that ended up dwarfed by its oversized bezels.

In contrast, Dell has used premium magnesium alloy for the screen bezel: that means it can be significantly thinner than before, despite showing no flex whatsoever. Enclosed inside it there’s a Full HD touchscreen that magnetically clings into either front- or rear-facing orientation; it’s backed with a sheet of carbon-fiber for resilience without weight or bulk.

We can’t talk about exact specifications, nor when exactly the XPS 12 Duo will hit the market, but we’d expect Dell to want to join the rush of firms releasing Windows 8 hardware around the end of October. What we can say is how well the new Dell works as both a notebook and a tablet. In the former orientation, the 12-inch form factor means the backlit keyboard is spacious enough – and has enough key-travel – for touch-typing, and has great feel. There’s also room for a good sized trackpad for when you don’t want to reach up to the screen.

A little pressure in the upper corner of the display, and it rotates smoothly and magnetically clips into place facing the other way. Close the lid, and you’ve got a tablet; it’s obviously heavier than a slate-only device, such as Apple’s new iPad, but then you also get a larger display. That delivers 400nit brightness, too, and is incredibly detailed and clear (so bright, indeed, it was difficult to photograph): websites look great (and you can use multitouch gestures to navigate them, of course) as does text whether you’re using the XPS 12 Duo as an ereader flipped into portrait orientation, or for creating content in apps like Word or PowerPoint. Keep the screen in tablet mode but leave the lid open, meanwhile, and you can use the XPS 12 Duo for presentations, controlling them from behind the display.

Dell’s compromise – or that of the XPS 12 Duo’s end user – is of weight, convenience and power. The convertible ran smoothly, despite crunching high-resolution graphics, while we used it, though its heft is more akin to an ultrabook than a true tablet. Those looking to carry it around in slate orientation will need to accept that there are concessions to be made if you want instant access to a decent keyboard.

Pricing will play a huge role, but with Dell positioning the XPS 12 Duo as a premium model (and having the smaller, dockable XPS 10 for those looking for a more mainstream Windows tablet implementation) all this slick hardware probably won’t come cheap. Still, for those wanting to make the most of Windows 8′s touch capabilities without giving up on notebook flexibility, it’s shaping up to be a strong (if niche) contender.

Dell XPS Duo 12 hands-on is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Dell XPS One 27 isn’t a new all-in-one PC, but with Windows 8 and full multitouch it really comes into its own. Fronted by a huge 27-inch Quad HD LCD – that’s 2560 x 1440 – and mounted on an adjustable stand, it’s an interesting alternative approach to all-in-ones to what we’ve seen from the other big name in the marketplace, Apple’s iMac.

Dell’s plastic bezel isn’t as attractive as the brushed metal of the iMac, but the materials don’t feel cheap, just more subdued. The company is aiming for business as well as home users, who might be more conservative but still want a machine that will last.

As for the stand, that’s reasonably stiff so as to support the heavy screen, but once you get it moving it’s no problem tilting and raising it to suit standing use. We’d like to see it lift a little higher, though being able to tilt the touchscreen back and interact with your fingers is a good compromise, and almost like a smaller version of Microsoft’s SUR40.

Windows 8 touch still has to fully convince the market, and while the Metro-style UI is suited to finger interaction, regular Windows apps have hopelessly small buttons on a 2560 x 1440 screen. How much of a problem that will be to end-users will depend on what software they use most often.

Dell will announce pricing and exact specifications for the XPS One 27 later in the year, when Microsoft releases Windows 8 officially.

Dell XPS One 27 Hands-on is written by Vincent Nguyen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Samsung‘s cheapest new Windows tablet for IFA is arguably its most interesting: no removable keyboard, but Windows RT on an incredibly lightweight form factor. Strongly reminiscent of Samsung’s Android tablets – no great surprise there, really – it’s a well-made and impressively slim slate with a tactile brushed aluminum rear panel that feels great in the hands.

Inside there’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor speeding at 1.5GHz, paired with 2GB of RAM; no sign of a Windows RT slate running Samsung’s own Exynos chips yet. As with the ATIV Smart PC and Smart PC Pro there’s both rear and front-facing cameras, though the quality on the latter was very poor.

The biggest drawback we could see was the absence of a stylus. Samsung is including its S Pen with the Note II, Note 10.1, and the two Windows 8 tablets, with note sync across all of them, but the ATIV Tab makes do with 10-point multitouch. True, for many tableteers that won’t be an issue, but it’s a disappointing omission in what was shaping up to be an impressively cohesive range.

Still, as Windows slates shape up, the ATIV Tab is looking to be a solid contender. Screen quality is on a par with the rich, bright and color-saturated Android models in Samsung’s range, and we can’t argue with the speed at which the Snapdragon runs. We like Samsung’s array of ports, too: the micro-HDMI output is a useful addition, as is the USB for plugging in a keyboard and mouse.

Price will be the deciding factor, and that’s still to be announced. If Samsung can match – or preferably undercut – the new iPad then it stands a chance of swaying users who might have bypassed Android for its patchy tablet app support and unfamiliarity with the standard PC desktop.

Samsung ATIV Tab Windows RT tablet hands-on is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Samsung’s Galaxy Camera might run Android, but in your hand it’s most definitely a point-and-shoot. Still, Samsung has taken advantage of that heft well: you get a huge 21x optical zoom, 16-megapixel camera and a vast 4.8-inch HD screen. We caught up with Samsung ahead of its IFA 2012 “Unpacked” launch event to see how the Galaxy Camera holds up. Read on for our hands-on first impressions.

If you’ve used a recent Samsung Android phone, then the Galaxy Camera’s interface should be familiar. It’s primarily intended for landscape orientation use, though an accelerometer will flip it into portrait mode if you rotate it. Three homescreens with the usual app and widget support, along with support for third-party software, email, browsing and more, are pulled directly from phones; the 35 tool editing suite is a new addition, but is equally straightforward thanks to the expansive touchscreen.

The face-combining tool we’ve seen on BlackBerry 10 – allowing you to pick out faces from multiple frames, and add them into one image to get the best shot of each person – works well, just as we’ve seen before. It’s not clear whether it’s powered by Scalado, as per RIM’s implementation, but we wouldn’t be surprised.

We were able to quickly snap off photos – and indeed you can shoot video and stills simultaneously, though the optical zoom proved more ponderous when clips were filming – and then have the Galaxy Camera automatically identify faces in the frames. Match each person to a contact, and the camera tags each frame with that person for easier recall later. You can search using multiple tags, and so can pull out images that were taken at the same time, with the same people showing, in the same location if you choose.

Sharing uses the normal Android share-to menu, though sized up to make the best use of the display, and so any app you have which supports sharing can be used with the camera. That should help longevity, such as if you find yourself addicted to a social network Samsung didn’t guess to include out of the box. Uploading can be either via WiFi or 3G/HSPA+, though you can’t use the latter connection to make calls. Given Android’s popularity with modded ROMs, though, we wouldn’t be surprised to see that change shortly after the Galaxy Camera’s Q4 2012 launch.

Cameras running Android are still rare, with Polaroid announcing one model at the top of the year but still yet to release it, and Nikon joining the rarified club in recent weeks with the Coolpix S800c. They’ll both need to be good to compete with the Samsung Galaxy Camera, however; its photographic abilities have Samsung’s lineage, and its camera tech significantly improves the usability experience overall. Pricing may end up being the deciding factor, however, so hopefully carriers won’t pull the rug from under the Galaxy Camera before it ever has a chance to shine.

Samsung Galaxy Camera hands-on is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.