The Sony Xperia S looks set to be hitting the UK shelves in March 2012. It’ll be the first pure “Sony” device to be released since Sony bought out its Scandinavian partners and ditched the “Ericsson”, and tablet enthusiasts are hoping that the Sony Xperia S will live up to the techy promise set by a Sony-only name. The Sony Xperia S is also the first Sony tablet to boast a dual-core processor – its 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8260 processor makes the Sony Xperia S nimble and smooth in its use, with 1GB of RAM. The Sony Xperia S will ship using the Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system, which will update to the latest Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system soon after the Sony Xperia S goes on sale. An Android smartphone like the Sony Xperia S gives you access to the Android Market, where thousands of useful and fun apps await you.

The Sony Xperia S boasts unusual, space-age looks. On first glance the Sony Xperia S is a shiny black rectangle, much like other comparable smartphones. The Sony Xperia S has crisp, clean lines, with a gentle curve to the back smoothing off any harshness and making it fit snugly in the hand. But the Sony Xperia S’s stand-out distinguishing feature is a transparent acrylic ring along the bottom of the handset. When it’s lit from within, you’ll see three glowing Android button icons appear. Although it’s actually the small touch-sensitive buttons just above it that hold functionality, the translucent, backlit band does make the Sony Xperia S look unique. Don’t be fooled though – the Sony Xperia S’s design feature isn’t just a pretty face. The transparent band is actually part of the Sony Xperia S’s antenna system – smart and functional. The Sony Xperia S has a crystal clear high definition screen that’s a good size at 4.3” with 720p x 1280 resolution – early reports suggest that screen clarity remains strong on the Sony Xperia S at all angles.

Turn the Sony Xperia S over and you’ll find an excellent camera – in fact the Sony Xperia S boasts one of the best cameras ever found on a smartphone. The Sony Xperia S’s camera has a whopping 12 megapixels, autofocus and Sony’s excellent Exmor R image sensor technology, which provides brilliant detail and low-light performance. The Sony Xperia S’s camera has a shot-to-shot time of well under a second, and the activation time is just 1.5 seconds, even from standby mode, which makes the Sony Xperia S incredibly usable as a camera, and produces great quality photos. And of course the Sony Xperia S’s camera has 1080p HD video recording ability.

One of the Sony Xperia S’s most useful features is sure to be the NFC (near field communication) capability – the Sony Xperia S will be the first of Sony’s smartphone to have NFC, a nifty feature which can be used as a way of sharing information between devices. You can use your Sony Xperia S’s NFC features to share content – such as contact details, websites, YouTube videos and maps – between two NFC-enabled devices simply by tapping them together. NFC can also be used in some places to pay for goods and services (rather like an Oyster card on London Underground) so at some point in the future you could dispense with your wallet and simply use your Sony Xperia S to pay for your shopping. What’s more, Sony are doing something different by selling the Sony Xperia S with four SmartTags which can be customised and used with NFC for a number of different uses. For instant, stick a SmartTag to the dashboard of your car and you can program it so that when it makes contact with your Sony Xperia S, your Sony Xperia S will automatically go to the sat nav function and synch with a Bluetooth headset. Or place a SmartTag in your living room, programmed so that when your Sony Xperia S makes contact with it, the music app opens and streams music through a Sony speaker. Program another SmartTag for your bedtime routine and place your Sony Xperia S to your bedroom SmartTag to automatically switch on the alarm clock and dim the screen light. A brilliant tool that will make your Sony Xperia S work hard for you wherever you go.

Another innovation for the Sony Xperia S is its fast-charge capabilities. In just 30 minutes, you can charge the Sony Xperia S to 80% capacity, and just ten minutes will give the Sony Xperia S an hour’s worth of power. Fantastic when you’re pushed for time.

The Sony Xperia S is due to hit the UK in March 2012. As a hard-working Android powerhouse full of features to make your life easier and more fun, the Sony Xperia S looks set to take centre-stage in the smartphone market.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 is coming soon, and it’s already gaining a reputation – well deserved, too, because it’s the world’s first tablet to feature the Super AMOLED Plus HD touchscreen – a brand-new state-of-the-art touchscreen technology which makes the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7′s TFT-LCD touchscreen brighter, thinner, less reflective and more energy efficient than any screen you’ve seen before. At 7.7 inches (195.58mm) across – hence the name! – the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7′s touchscreen is 0.7 inches bigger than that of its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Some experts are already saying the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7‘s display is the perfect size for a tablet screen and that it puts the iPad 2′s touchscreen display to shame – the WXGA display has the highest pixel density display among tablets in the market, with 1024×600 resolution, and it offers crystal-clear viewing no matter what angle you hold it at.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 looks amazing too, with a stunning design. Its crisp, clear touchscreen is set within a jet black surround, adorned with a single Samsung logo, and this is backed by a classy brushed metal rear panel.

The brilliant, vivid touchscreen is just one of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7′s many attractive qualities. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 is designed to be comfortable to hold and use, even one-handed, and it has a super-portable design. The Samsung Galaxy Tab’s body is slimmer than a pencil at just 7.89mm, so it won’t take up much space in your bag, or even your coat pocket. And at just 340g, it won’t weigh you down – in fact, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 is a full 45g lighter than its predecessor the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and it’s not far off half the weight of the iPad 2.

You’ll be able to save your videos and pictures on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7′s internal memory, which will come in a choice of 16, 32 or 64 megabytes, and of course you’ll be able to expand the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7′s storage capacity by using the microSD slot and a memory card of up to 32 GB. It’s running on Honeycomb – an Android operating system designed by Google specifically for tablets, and it has a powerful 1.4GHz Dual Core Processor – that’s 400MHz quicker than the iPad 2. With 1GB of RAM, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 is a speedy performer, even when multitasking.

With the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7, you’ll be able to access the internet in a variety of ways, no matter where you are – its connectivity options are second to none. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 benefits from WiFi Channel Bonding technology which will let you receive data-rates around twice as much as existing WiFi. Plus of course the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 has Bluetooth and 3G (HSDPA, HSUPA). The Adobe Flash Player support means you’ll be able to enjoy thousands of great websites in their fullest glory. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7′s Google links mean it’s fully compatible with Google and Android’s applications – download games and apps from the Android Market, and make the most out of Google Talk, Gmail, Google Calendar, YouTube, Google Maps, Google Latitude, Google Places, and Google Maps Navigation, all of which work seamlessly on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7. And if you exhaust the internet for entertainment, relax and watch a film – the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 can play a variety of video formats.

On the back of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7, you’ll find a 3.2 megapixel camera with an LED flash and a handy autofocus feature and several modes, including single shot, continuous, panorama and self-shot. Make your own photo-collages in a jiffy with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7′s auto image-stitching feature. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 even has geotagging facilities thanks to its internal GPS system. This means that you can set the camera up to automatically tag photos taken on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 with the place that they were taken! The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7′s rear-facing camera is also capable of recording 720p high-definition video. And don’t forget that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 also has a 2 megapixel front-facing camera, to be used for face-to-face video-conferencing with your friends and family – brilliant for keeping in touch with loved ones from far away.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 is a fresh new tablet with great connectivity and features – a brilliant addition to the tablet market.

The Huawei Vision is aptly named – it really is a vision. A good-looking and well-priced mid-range smartphone with a host of features, it runs on Google’s Android 2.3.4 interface (otherwise known as Gingerbread), and it’s landing on UK shelves in time to be in your Christmas stocking.

The Huawei Vision’s super-responsive touchscreen is slightly curved, adding a real sense of quality and luxury, as well as reducing those pesky reflections. And with 252dpi (dots/pixels per inch) you get crisp, clear images – ideal for showing off the pictures you’ll be taking with the 5-megapixel camera with single-LED flash and fast-responding autofocus that’s housed on the back of the Huawei Vision. You can use the Huawei Vision for movies, too – budding film-makers will love using the Huawei Vision to record in 720p video.

With a strong and sturdy unibody aluminium design, the Huawei Vision weighs about 135g, and is just 9.9mm at its thinnest, with a width and height of 59.3mm and 116.8mm. The back of the Huawei Vision is a classy anodised metal, topped at each end with a matte black plastic. The Huawei Vision’s glossy black front piece has a 3.7-inch TFT capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels and 256,000 colours. The Huawei Vision’s touchscreen has an accelerometer sensor, so it rotates automatically when you need it to, and a proximity sensor which locks the screen when it senses that you’re making a call. It’s the perfect size for a touchscreen, big enough to ensure accuracy when typing on the classic Android keyboard or on the Huawei’s default TouchPal keyboard, but not so big that smaller-handed people find it a stretch. This means that not only is the Huawei Vision’s touchscreen ideal for hands of all shapes and sizes, it’s the perfect size for all applications – typing text messages, tweets and Facebook posts, and also for playing the many games you can download from the Android Market. In fact, the Huawei Vision comes ready loaded with Angry Birds, Asphalt 6: Adrenaline, Order & Chaos Online and Guerrilla Bob HD, so the second you get your hands on a Huawei Vision, you can start gaming right away.

The Huawei Vision’s specifications are enough to rival any other smartphone. Running on Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread, the OS designed by Google especially for smartphones, it has a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor and an inbuilt 2GB (ROM) internal memory, with 1GB of storage for your pictures, videos and so on. If that’s not enough for you, the Huawei Vision’s microSD card slot can take memory cards of up to a whopping 32GB.

The Huawei Vision’s user interfaces will blow your mind – they are simple and intuitive to use yet fun, and they look very impressive indeed. In fact, the Huawei Vision gives you a choice of two experiences. Traditionally minded Huawei Vision owners can choose the classic Android launcher, which brings up the Google interface that Android fans know and love. If you fancy something a bit more fun, the Huawei Vision has the 3D Carousel interface, a 3D-style carousel that will allow you to view all your home screens at once in an interactive ring, even spinning them at high speed if you wish – a fun feature which looks great and makes accessing your Huawei Vision home screens more interesting. Adding and removing panels is a snap too – you can just drag and drop them in the 3D interface.

Online access on the Huawei Vision is easy – not surprisingly for a phone with an operating system built by Google. Connecting with WiFi and 3G (plus Bluetooth), it comes with the stock Android browser which supports multiple windows, bookmarks, sharing options, JavaScript, and Adobe Flash – cleverly, internet on your Huawei Vision looks a lot like what you might see on your laptop. The Huawei Vision features a host of apps to make life easier and more enjoyable. You can search Google, use Gmail and chat with your friends on Google Talk, and use the inbuilt GPS system with Google Maps to find your way around. Access your documents and work wherever you are with Documents To Go, or browse, download (for free!) and read thousands of books with your Aldiko book reader app. Plus the Android Market has thousands of apps for any purpose you could think of, accessible at a moments notice and often free of charge.

A smartphone that truly allows you to make the most of the internet wherever you are, the Huawei Vision is a mid-range phone that will tick all your boxes.

An exciting development in the much-loved BlackBerry Curve range, the BlackBerry Curve 9380 is the first in the series to replace the traditional QWERTY keypad with a touchscreen. It’s a ground-breaking move for BlackBerry in a device that’s expected to hit the UK market by the end of 2011 – just in time for Santa’s little elves.

The QWERTY keypad is gone, replaced by a bright HVGA touchscreen with a crystal-clear screen resolution of 480mm by 360mm and 188ppi (pixels per inch). At 3.2” (81.28mm), the touchscreen covers almost the whole of the face of the BlackBerry Curve 9380, leaving space at the bottom for the five necessary push buttons: call, terminate, menu, back and optical track pad, all backlit – a nice touch. As the BlackBerry Curve 9380 runs on the reliable and speedy BlackBerry 7 operating system, the touchscreen, like the rest of the phone, responds swiftly to your requests. Its shape and size fit comfortably in the palm and makes navigating the screen, even with one hand, a snap – the drop-down notifications menus can be activated with a swipe without needing to readjust the phone’s position in your hand.

The BlackBerry Curve 9380 is a handsome device, with its glossy black finish coming as a refreshing change to the matte finish seen on many smartphones such as the BlackBerry Bold 7970. With dimensions of 109mm by 60mm by 11.2mm, it’s thin, and its sturdy and strong body is hardy enough not to need further protection from a sleeve. Weighing just 98g, the BlackBerry Curve 9380 is a very pocketable smartphone.

From the back, the BlackBerry Curve 9380 looks comparable to its older sister, the BlackBerry Curve 9360 – only true BlackBerry experts would notice that the microUSB port on the BlackBerry Curve 9380 is on the left, a little lower than on the BlackBerry Curve 9360.

The BlackBerry Curve 9380 comes pre-loaded with apps to make browsing the internet and keeping up to date with your mates easier than ever. Of course, there’s BBM – and lots of new BBM-connected applications which will let you chat to friends while you play a game or listen to BBM Music. Now the BlackBerry Curve 9380 also comes with the nifty Social Feeds application – a one-stop shop for all your social media needs, it allows you to update all your social media feeds at once, and see messages from your friends the second they arrive. And of course, you can browse the internet with ease on the BlackBerry Curve 9380 with the updated and improved web browser – it has a new state-of-the-art JavaScript compiler to improve the load time speed of web pages for a significantly faster, more fluid web browsing experience. Page loads are 40% quicker than on the Blackberry 6.0 OS. 3G connectivity and WiFi are standard on the BlackBerry Curve 9380, for internet on the move, and the new optimised HTML5 adds a new dimension to gaming and video. And if you really need information on the go, the BlackBerry Curve 9380 has a smart new update to BlackBerry’s popular Universal Search feature – just say your search terms out loud and its voice-activated search will find whatever you’re looking for.

Of course, a smartphone isn’t smart without a camera, and the BlackBerry Curve 9380 has an excellent built-in 5-megapixel camera with a bright LED flash, x4 zoom capabilities and a handy dedicated button – perfect for quick snaps. It’s a VGA video camera too. Save your pictures on the 512MB built-in memory, or augment the memory capability using the microSD slot – the BlackBerry Curve 9380 can support memory cards of up to 32GB.

And the BlackBerry Curve 9380 camera supports the amazing Augmented Reality technology. What’s that? Well, imagine you’re standing in front of a famous building. Using the Wikitude app, you can point your camera at the building, and the app will tell you all about it. Augmented Reality technology even links in with BlackBerry favourite BBM – hold it up in a crowd and it will recognise the faces of your BBM friends.

Packed with space-age features, fast and good looking, the BlackBerry Curve 9380 truly is a super-smart smartphone that you’re sure to love.