HTC’s market success is based on excellent phones that have better production quality than the competitors, including the “small things” that made their use intuitive and simple. Although they’ve already had their go at the tablet market, HTC Flyer is their first Android-powered attempt at it. As time passed, with competition stiffening, it became clear that HTC was preparing something serious. Have they been able to adapt their smartphone stratagem to tablets sufficiently well? Has the waiting paid off? Does Flyer have something to separate it from the similarly-based competition?

Although tablet sales have exploded worldwide, creating a successful tablet isn’t such an easy task as it may seem. Alongside Apple’s iPad as the undisputed market leader, other manufacturers have to distinguish themselves from everyone else in order to attract buyers. ASUS’ engineers have successfully done this with their Transformer model, which enabled tablets to create useful content as well as consume it. A few months later, ASUS is presenting a new tablet with a somewhat different concept, which took us by surprise, so we eagerly got down to testing it.

Last year’s Samsung Galaxy Tab has put quite a task in front of the company for this year, being the best-selling Android tablet on the market. Unlike the previous model, which has been sold as a single model with various memory configurations, Samsung has now turned to a different approach. During the year, two, if not three different models will be presented, and the first one to reach us was Galaxy Tab 10.1v.

In the IT world, seeing an absolutely top-notch product from a company trying to show itself in the best possible way and prove itself to the market isn’t such a rare occasion. However, experience has shown us that the heir to such a product rarely matches up to the original one. The reasons for this are many, ranging from high expectations from the end users to the manufacturer losing focus. With all the hype surrounding the announcement of Galaxy S II, we’ve been very interested in whether Samsung will be able to break this rule and make a phone that would surpass the best-sold Android device ever.

Google first presented the Nexus series both in order to ease application programming to its own development teams and in order to sell mobile phones directly, without the need for outsourcing devices to mobile providers. The main characteristics of this series is the lack of “cosmetics” that manufacturers tend to ornate their phones with, exceptionally frequent updates to Android OS, as well as a certain feeling of owning an elite device. The first device in this series, Nexus One, saw the light of day on 5th January 2010, and Google’s manufacturer of choice for promoting it was HTC. Regardless of the qualities of this device when it appeared, it wasn’t greeted too warmly by the mainstream market, and was withdrawn during the course of last year.

Since the release of HTC’s HD2, it seems that most manufacturers have been putting out phones with only minor design changes to this model’s tried-and-true basis. A large display, minimal edges, a few buttons beneath and a logical layout of the side buttons; all this, combined with a high-quality casing, seems to be the perfect smartphone formula, and if you think we’re overreacting, have a look at HTC’s phone gamma since the appearance of HD2 and try to find a significant design change. A year ago, around the time when Samsung Galaxy S was about to appear on the market, LG started their own project, now embodied in the P990 model, or Optimus 2X. The idea was to match the aforementioned Samsung model, but it was late enough on the market to enable Samsung to release the second generation of its flagship product - Galaxy S2. In the meantime, let’s have a look at what’s been cooking in LG’s kitchen for the past year or so.

It’s been well over seven months since Nokia’s E7 was first announced. In the world of today, using the PC analogy, it would be the same as if someone had just presented a PC with a 1 GHz CPU and 256 MB RAM. The rhythm imposed by Android phone manufacturers themselves is so relentless and unforgiving that you’ll have a very hard time staying on the road unless you’re holding onto the latest trends. Even if you manage to present an all-around perfect phone, it’ll only get a week or so of glory, as newer, faster, larger, better ones will follow suite immediately.

HTC has continued the tradition of refreshing existing devices with this phone, with a noticeable intention to correct all flaws that have been observed in previous ones. Incredible S is a phone that’s easiest to describe as a somewhat smaller Desire HD with a changed appearance, which means that it’s got to be a high-quality phone by default.

For years, we’ve encountered Samsung notebooks on various fairs and IT gatherings, but they’ve never amassed enough on the market for one to get to our office, it seems. This situation is finally prone to changing, it seems, and we got our hands on the first Samsung notebook that we’ve had the chance to test officially. The model at hand, although not exactly new, is well-balanced nevertheless, with a mid-range price and equipment; a perfect chance to get to know what Samsung envisions for mid-range PCs.

In the torrent of tablet devices appearing on the world market, it’s increasingly difficult to spot extraordinary products. After making friends with the development version of ASUS’ Transformer tablet, you may rest assured that you won’t miss it easily. Its excellent production quality and a seamless match of its two sections, as well as a stunning user interface (Android 3.0) and extraordinary concept, all make for something to capture your attention for an extended period of time.