New devices from Samsung, Sony, LG, and more announced at IFA 2012

The IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin hasn't officially started, and yet we're already drowning in a comfortingly warm deluge of tablet and smartphone announcements.

Don't worry if you've missed any unveilings, though, because we've collated the biggest and brightest new devices on the horizon right here for your perusing pleasure.

Is it a phone? Is it a tablet? Is it a bird? Whatever this category of device ends up being called, the Galaxy Note II is definitely a sequel to the commercially successful Galaxy Note, and it definitely looks a lot like an enlarged Galaxy S III.

Featuring a 5.5-inch Super AMOLED screen, a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, and a nifty stylus, this Android Jelly Bean-powered 'phablet' / 'tabphone' will be out in October.

Bit of an odd one this. Whereas mashing a tablet and a phone together sort of makes sense, mashing a phone and a high-powered compact digital camera together only really makes sense if you're drunk. And tired. And out of ideas.

Still, what you've got here is essentially a 16.3-megapixel camera with a 21x optical zoom attached to an Android 4.1 (a.k.a. Jellybean) device with a 4.8-inch touchscreen; 3G, 4G, and wi-fi connections; and a quad-core processor. It, too, is available in October.

Sony Xperia T


Sony's new flagship Android phone, set to be used by James Bond in his next adventure, the Xperia T (or Xperia TX as it'll be known in some territories) is the successor to the pretty impressive Xperia S.

It sports a 4.6-inch screen with a resolution of 1280x720, and is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor and 1GB of RAM. Expect it to turn up in shops in the next few weeks. It'll run Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box, but will upgraded to Jelly Bean shortly thereafter.

This new mid-range Xperia handset features a 4.3-inch touchscreen and ships with the same chipset as the Xperia T (thus making it 'mid' in size only).

It even has a higher ppi (pixels per inch) count than its bigger brother. It's expected to drop later in the year; will ship with Ice Cream Sandwich; and will come in pink, black, or white.

The runt of the litter, the Xperia J is a new entry-level smartphone with a single-core processor and a 4-inch 854x480 resolution touchscreen. Again, it will ship with Ice Cream Sandwich; will land later in the year; and will come in black, gold, white, and pink.

Sony's second stab at the iPad end of the tablet market looks like an impressive beast. While it retains the folded magazine design of its predecessor, it packs a whopping Tegra 3 quad-core processor under the bonnet. You can read more about it in our announcement story here. It should be occupying store shelves at the start of next month.

Samsung ATIV S

The ATIV S will be Samsung's first Windows Phone 8-powered mobile. With a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen, it's similar in form to the Galaxy S III. It packs less of a punch under the hood, however, for it runs a dual-core 1.5GHz processor and contains 1GB of RAM.

It does come with an expandable SD card slot and HD resolution, though, if those sort of things float your boat.

Samsung ATIV Tab

A slim Windows RT tablet that's going to go up against Microsoft's own Surface range, the ATIV Tab measures in at 10.1 inches, making it a teeny bit bigger than the iPad.

Its screen resolution is a none-too-impressive 1366x768, and it's only running a 1.5GHz dual-core processor. We don't know how power hungry the Windows RT OS is going to be, though, so that may well be ample.

The Vivo Tab and Vivo Tab RT are basically Asus's Windows 8 and Windows RT versions of its highly successful Android-powered Transformer Tab.

The Vivo Tab is a larger beast, with a nearly 12-inch touchscreen compared to the Tab RT's standard 10.1. The Windows 8 version ships with an Intel Atom CPU and 2GB of RAM, while its RT counterpart houses a Tegra 3 processor and a 12-core GPU.

A smartphone for everyone, which in marketing speak means it's a middle-of-the-range model with less power than the big boys.

Sporting a nice-looking 4.7-inch IPS screen, and running Ice Cream Sandwich to make all the bleeps and bloops happen at the right time, the LG Optimus L9 has only one 'weak' link: its 1GHz dual-core processor.

The inevitable sequel to one of HTC's early flagship Android devices, the Desire X is a middle-of-the-road smartphone with a dual-core 1GHz Snapdragon S4 chip, a 4-inch screen, and Ice Cream Sandwich pootling away in the background.