With a 5.3in, 1,280 x 800 Super AMOLED display beaming forth, the Galaxy Note immediately grabs the attention. The display is eye-searingly bright, and colours are as rich and saturated as we’ve come to expect from Samsung’s Super AMOLED technology. The huge resolution gives the Galaxy Note a super crisp 285 ppi (pixels per inch) pixel density, which leaves it not too far behind the 326ppi of Apple’s iPhone 4 Retina display.

Small hands will struggle with the Galaxy Note’s 83mm width – not to mention the fact that persons of a smaller stature will look like they’re holding a full-sized tablet to their ear – but this giant smartphone felt perfectly manageable in my larger palms. The 9.65mm thickness gives the Galaxy Note a slim, dainty profile, and while Samsung made no mention of weight, it didn’t feel it unduly heavy.

There’s a trick hidden in the Galaxy Note’s bottom corner, however: a removable stylus that Samsung’s dubbed the S Pen.

This stylus partners with Samsung’s S Note software for making handwritten notes or even artistic sketches. It’s possible to choose from a variety of pen/brush types and thicknesses with the drop-down menu, and thanks to the Galaxy Note’s sizeable screen, inking feels natural and comfortable.

While it’s easy to scribble handwritten notes, or doodle to your heart’s content, you can also import pictures onto the canvas. While any photograph will do, it’s possible to grab a screenshot – from Google Maps, for instance – and then directly annotate it with the S Pen.

Basic handwriting recognition also allows you to use the S Pen within the Note’s messaging application. In our brief time with the Galaxy Note, however, it appeared that only single words could be converted, and there was a noticeable pause as the recognition process took place. Clearly, the Galaxy Note’s handwriting recogniton still has some way to go. Still, with Samsung planning to release the S Pen SDK to app developers, there’s a potentially bright future for pen-driven apps.

Happily, though, the S Pen makes a great partner with the pre-installed Swype keyboard – without a finger to obscure the view, we found it quicker to tap texts than ever.

Samsung’s also trying to tout the Note as a hybrid business device. With Juniper Networks’ Junos Pulse installed as standard – an SSL-enabled VPN service – and that high-resolution screen making remote desktop operation entirely feasible, the Galaxy Note is potentially more capable than a standard smartphone.

Going by the range of accessories on show, Samsung’s keen to stress the Note’s versatility. In addition to swish leather cases, larger styluses, docking stations and vehicle mounts, the appearance of Bluetooth keyboards seems to suggest that the Note is capable of much more than just phone, SMS and internet duties.

There’s no doubting the Galaxy Note’s potential. With a dual-core 1.4Ghz processor powering Google’s Android 2.3; 16GB or 32GB of internal memory; wireless networking that includes Bluetooth 3 and reaches up to dual-band 802.11n;  an 8-megapixel rear and 2-megapixel front-facing camera; GPS; and Full-HD video recording at 30fps, the Galaxy Note can hold its own against any smartphone on the market today.

But with no set price or mention of a release date, we’ll just have to sit patiently and wait for our very own review unit to arrive. Only then will we be able to tell whether Samsung’s over-sized smartphone is a genuine star in the making.

As the name suggests, the new baby of Samsung’s tablet range sports a 7.7in, 1,280 x 800 pixel screen. It’s not just any old display, though: Samsung has squeezed in a Super AMOLED Plus panel, and the eye-popping vibrancy of the thing just has to be seen to be believed.

Even under the viciously bright spot lighting in Samsung’s (still half-built) hall, the Galaxy Tab 7.7’s display looked glorious. Colours are super-saturated – so much so, that it doesn’t feel like you’re looking at a screen at all.

Reach out and touch the tiny tablet, though, and it’s beautifully petite. Measuring just 7.89mm thick, the gently curved edges felt great in our giant hands, and it feels just as barely-there as the 335g weight suggests.

As you’d rightfully hope given the dual-core 1.4GHz processor inside (we’re waiting on confirmation of the actual architecture) the Tab feels pretty alert in use. We did experience the odd hitch here and there while surfing the web, but we’d be more inclined to blame the variable quality of IFA’s wireless airwaves than the tablet itself.

Indeed, delve through a copy of the Washington Post with the supplied newspaper reader, and there’s no lag at all while zipping around the front page and zooming in and out.

The tweaked home screen gives the little Galaxy Tab a touch of individuality, and Samsung’s keen to make a big splash on its four Hubs. The Game, Music, Readers and Social Hubs are pretty self-explanatory, but the Social Hub appears to be by far the most useful, aggregating email, contacts, calendar and friends across multiple social networks, it’s the perfect addition to such a temptingly portable tablet.

In fact, the only issue we noticed during our time with the Tab 7.7 was that its metal back became noticeably warm to the touch. After around 15 minutes of surfing the web, it was warm enough to start making our hands feeling fairly sweaty: obviously, squeezing a dual-core 1.4Ghz processor into such a tiny chassis has its downsides.

Still, the Galaxy Tab 7.7’s specifications are nothing to complain about. The presence of 5GHz 802.11n is a welcome – especially so given the congested state of today’s 2.4Ghz spectrum – and as channel bonding is supported, streaming or transferring gigabytes of music or movies will be swift and speedy.

There’s nothing lacking elsewhere: GPS and Bluetooth 3.0 make the grade, and the 3-megapixel front-facing camera is partnered with a 2-megapixel one at the rear. And, in contrast to some of the competition, Android 3.2 is installed as standard.

In fact, there’s only one major problem that Samsung has to deal with, and that’s the Galaxy Tab 7.7’s likeness to a shrunken iPad. Going by the message in the picture below, our German chums might have to wait patiently until the Galaxy Tab 7.7 finally arrives on Amazon.de.

So RIM has dumped the mechanical click screen of the original Storm completely and has replaced it with a brand new system. And having spent nearly an hour in the company of its successor – the BlackBerry Storm 2 – I can confirm that it’s a huge improvement.

The Storm 2 uses a system of four software-controlled electro-mechanical actuators (which sit behind the screen), to give a sort of localised haptic feedback. Press the screen anywhere on its surface and it gives feedback in response – but this is like no other feedback vibration I’ve experienced before. Incredibly, pressing the screen feels just like clicking a button, and it’s very responsive too.

Coupled with the BlackBerry OS’s effective auto correction, I managed to get up to a rapid typing speed instantly, and because it’s multitouch, you don’t have to wait to finish one key press before beginning another.

It really is a revelation to type on, whether it’s being used in portrait or full Qwerty landscape mode. I’ve always preferred hardware keyboards, but this could finally sway me. I’ll reserve final judgement for when I’ve had a longer play with the phone (expect a review very soon).

I do have reservations, however, and the first is that, at times, it felt as if it might be too sensitive – more than once I found myself holding the phone and clicking by accident. Also, RIM has yet to implement a rival to the iPhone’s pinch-to-zoom gesture in its web browser, preferring the simpler, yet less-effective, double tap to zoom approach.

How about the rest of the phone, though? Well, The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s sleeker, with formerly sharp edges softened and corners rounded a little. The new screen system also means there’s no unsightly gap around the edges of the display for dust and crumbs to collect in.

The speaker has moved from the rear of the phone to the bottom edge and the phyiscal buttons below the screen have been replaced . Otherwise it’s a very similar size and weight to the original.

The screen is the same size as before – measuring 3.25in and boasting a 360 x 480 resolution that offers dark blacks and good contrast. The battery is identical – a 1,400mAh lithium polymer unit. The camera is still 3.2-megapixels with an LED flash and there’s assisted GPS, and all the usual smartphone toys: Bluetooth, ambient light , proximity and accelerometer sensors.

However, version 5 of the BlackBerry OS makes its debut. One new feature demonstrated to us this morning was the “flying cursor” and multitouch text-select facility (pictured below). Again it looks like someone at RIM has been putting serious thought into this: it’s straightforward to fire up and the large, finger-friendly handles used to adjust the selection make it easy to get precisely the selection you need.

Other additions include direct access to the connections menu and clock screen from the home screen, plus an all new version of BlackBerry Messenger.

The touchscreen and OS aren’t the only additions, either. With the Storm 2, RIM has filled the gaping hole in the first Storm’s specification and added Wi-Fi. Storage has been boosted too, from just 128MB of flash memory to 256MB plus a further 2GB for data storage.

Suffice to say, I walked away from my brief demo this morning very impressed indeed. In completely revamping the touchscreen, RIM has made an extremely brave move and one that looks like it could pay off.

We’re expecting a review sample to arrive very soon, so watch this space for our final verdict.

But what worked for the old days of magazines is just getting ridiculous in this online, instant age.

In the last month alone I’ve spent days with several brand new products from several different manufacturers, each interesting in its own way, and each so new that no reviews currently exist on the internet. But rather than basking in the glow of all that humming web traffic, I’m just about ready to put my foot through the next TFT that lands in our loading bay.

The conversation usually starts well. “Hi David, great news! We’ve got this great new monitor/laptop/cat that’s just arrived. Tell you what, you can have it early if you want?”

“Early? Like an exclusive?” I perk up. “Sure, send it in!”

Said device arrives, I get to work testing it down in the dungeon that is the PC Pro Labs. The details are emailed through to me – specs and pictures, obligatory overexcited press release – and I begin writing my review. But there’s just one thing missing: what’s the price going to be?

I get back to them: “Price? Is that not on there? Oh, we’ll find out and get back to you.”

Great. A few days later the review’s pretty much written and ready to run, I just need the price to write my final conclusion. I chase them up again: “Yep, working on it. With you ASAP.”

The product goes to our professional photographers, they spend their time (and our budget) making the ugliest product look startlingly beautiful (try that with some IT kit of your own and you’ll realise what a good job they do) with different styles for both mag and web. I send my provisional review to be edited, the sub-editors check the copy and the details, and we start to lay it out for the magazine and online. But the review copy can’t go yet as I still don’t have a price.

A review can’t be finished if i don’t know how much the damn thing’s going to cost.

But what’s this? Could this really be? It is! An email from the company. Finally, I can get it finished off and still get it online before those [censored] at www.[censored].co.uk get theirs done. Hurrah! But then I read it.

“This product will not be launched to retail until August. The SRP has not currently been decided.”

Oh.

Note to manufacturers: Exclusive reviews aren’t exclusive reviews if they’re just previews.