It’s that time of the year again. Saying hello from Berlin, Germany, we’re here at IFA 2012 to capture all the exciting Android news live as it happens. What is IFA you ask? It is essentially the European rival to CES and is an annual event bringing you the latest smartphones, tablets, Smart TV’s and other gadgets. Here’s what to expect this year.
Things will slowly get kicked off this evening, with all the good stuff getting truly under way Wednesday starting with Samsung. This is expected to be one of the biggest IFA events in history, but that won’t all be Android so we’ll just bring you details on what’s important to us. If you want to stay tuned on everything happening be sure and check out our sister site SlashGear.
Lets recap shall we? Last year Samsung stole the show with the unveiling of a new handset segment that is now known as a “phablet” with their larger than usual 5.3-inch Samsung Galaxy Note. They also teased everyone with an awesome sized 7.7-inch Android tablet, but that quickly disappeared from the IFA floor thanks to Apple, and was later released nationwide.
What can we expect this year? Lots of stuff! We’ll start with Samsung, well, because they’ll probably be stealing the show again this year with the Galaxy Note 2. The even larger phablet will come in with a 5.5-inch HD Super AMOLED display — which is huge — a quad-core Samsung Exynos processor, 2GB of RAM, an 8 megapixel camera, and be super thin too. Lets not forget that S-Pen stylus either. Then there is rumors of a Samsung smart camera powered by Android, and they’ll be showing off their recently announced Galaxy Player 5.8-inch media device. Samsung Mobile Unpacked 2012 in Berlin kicks off Wednesday at 10:00 PST, 1:00 EST — followed by an international press conference Thursday.
Surely they’ll have much more than that to show, but we’re just focusing on Android here. Next up would have to be LG simply because they’ve been making the most noise. LG’s brand new Optimus G superphone should also rock the show. LG and Qualcomm have been talking up their next flagship phone, and with good reason. The LG Optimus G will be the first smartphone powered with Qualcomm’s new S4 Pro quad-core processor, as well as LG’s TrueHD IPS+ display. LG’s display tech should be more efficient, brighter than anything available, and has a new process that makes the screen appear closer for stunning graphics, colors, and visuals. We’re excited for that phone and hope they’ll make a big reveal so we can get our paws all over it.
HTC however, hasn’t had much of an exciting year in 2012 other than the HTC ONE series they debuted back in February. We haven’t heard much on their front but a few new budget devices like the HTC Desire X should make an appearance, and whatever else they’ve been hiding. I’m hoping they’ll show off the HTC phablet we’ve heard plenty of rumors about.
Overall we are expecting a pretty great show this year, especially from Samsung. They might have their new Galaxy S III color options on display too. We can also expect some announcements and products from the folks at Sony, Toshiba, ViewSonic, and plenty other Android manufacturers. Remember that Android Community and our sister site SlashGear are here live to capture all the exciting news as it happens. For all the news direct from the showroom floor you’ll want to stay tuned to our IFA 2012 Hub.
