The annual IFA tech show has just gone by in Berlin, Germany, and as ever there’s been plenty of gadgetry to drool over. That’s where tech enthusiasts and the media headed for a taste of Berlin’s beer, sausages, cool weather — and lots of tech.

The Note is back

And of course there have to be smartphones. Among the ones drawing the curious was the Galaxy Note 8, at Samsung’s large and prominent pavilion at the Messe Berlin venue. Yes, the Note 7 went about exploding last year but this time around Samsung has rigorously tested the next version and has played it safe by putting in a 3,300mAh battery — some feel it may be too little for the 6.3-inch phablet but the Korean giant has also enhanced charging and battery usage so that it proves enough for the phone.

While we’ll see how that goes when the device arrives for review, the one thing that’s evident is the nearly absent bezels on this big phone — which apparently doesn’t feel that big when you hold it. With an expanse of screen space, you see why they call it Infinity Display, in all its glory. The display is 6.3" Quad HD+ Super AMOLED (2,960 x 1,440) with 521ppi. The screen is vivid and bright, and with that much space, a visual treat, but the thing that differentiates the Note 8 from all other smartphones is the S Pen or stylus, which has also seen more usefulness in this version. You can write up to a hundred pages of stuff using the extremely accurate pen before you save and move on to another file. You can even write on the sleeping surface of the device. With 4,096 levels of pressure, the S Pen is a nice tool for designers and artists. As ever, the Samsung flagship has a highly capable dual camera set up. The Note 8 is already up for pre-order in India and it won’t be long now before the device is launched in the country. It promises to be expensive.

LG’s head turner

Strong interest in LG’s V30 was also evident at IFA. First reactions are that it’s the best LG has ever made. This phone looks a bit like the Note 8 but at six inches it isn’t quite as big and nor is it expected to cost as much. LG has done away with the second screen that came with the previous version, which is probably a good thing since it really wasn’t as great a feature as it sounds.

The V30 also has thin bezels and lots of screen space in that increasingly popular 18:9 ratio on its 2,880 x 1,440 display. Both the phones come with the 835 Snapdragon processor with 4GB RAM and also has a dual camera though the two devices use them in different ways. It has an f/1.6 aperture, which is unusual for a phone, but whether this is more gimmick than optics, we shall have to wait for reviews to see. One particularly neat trick the set up has is to be able to touch the screen to focus on an object and selectively zoom in on it to shoot. The camera also has a set of lenses or filters for photography. It’s video recording is meant to be quite special as are the audio capabilities of the phone. It supports lossless quality recording. Some have referred to the V30 as the star of the show at IFA.

Other smartphones showcased in Berlin were Sony’s XZ1, which has a feature to create 3D objects from photographs as part of its camera. There was also the Nokia 8, which also has a camera trick to take two selfies or ‘bothies’.

Mixed Reality is here

Microsoft chose to call its implementation of holographic technology and virtual reality, mixed reality, and several companies such as Acer, Dell, Asus, and Lenovo showed off their new mixed reality headsets, letting visitors experience them. Acer showed off its Windows Mixed Reality headset with a game of Ghostbusters in which the user can use the handheld controllers to manipulate objects and be inside the game, as it were. There are trigger buttons and a touchpad and even a Windows key on the controllers – one for each hand – which are used to move around.

The headset has sensors and cameras built in to track the user in a 3D space. Unlike the Gear VR or other VR headsets available to the masses now, this kind of headset needs a highly powered PC to work with — not something Acer has a shortage of.

Acer’s mean machines

In fact, Acer launched a number of laptops and PCs at the IFA show, including an absolute monster of a machine, the Predator Orion 9000, which has more power than an ordinary user will have ever seen in a desktop machine.

The Orion is for serious gamers who actually spend a lot of time and money customising and building their own desktops. The Orion has a glass panel, which can be flipped open so the user can add components and upgrade even further.

For instance, they can add a fan and have five of them cooling down this behemoth of a machine. Where ordinary computers barely have 4 to 8GB of RAM, the Orion has 128GB and sports an 18-core Intel’s i9 7980XE processor.

The machine can take up to 4 Vega graphics cards. It is primed for 4K resolution and VR, which goes without saying. The Orion actually looks the beast it is — something that came in from alien space and pushed its way into our world.

It even has wheels and handles because gamers like to take their machines around and game in teams.

At IFA, Lenovo as ever launched a salvo of products including Yoga convertibles of which we already reviewed one, the Yoga 720. Also launched was the Miix 520 — a laptop, which has a detachable 12.2-inch screen. And to round things off, a water resistant Moto X4 phone.

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