SlashGear At IFA 2011: What To Expect

This week in Berlin, SlashGear will be covering IFA 2011, one of the oldest industrial exhibitions in Germany – the following is a guide to what we're expecting to see. We'll be covering a whole range of hardware, software, and beyond while we're at the week-long series of events, starting with Samsung's Unpacked II, this Thursday the 1st of September, where we'll be live-blogging the event from the site. We've got leaks and tips from all sorts of brands and from all manner of devices, come with us and explore the next generation of gadgets and technology straight outta Germany!

Before we get into the details of what we might expect from the event, I've got to let you know why they call it IFA instead of CEU Consumer Electronics Unlimited as their logo notes. IFA stands for Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin (International radio exhibition Berlin, aka 'Berlin Radio Show') and started in 1924 back when radios were what you used to listen to War news. Now the IFA is one of the world's largest international consumer electronics and home appliances shows. IFA takes place September 2nd-7th and unofficially starts off with the Samsung Unpacked event the morning of the 1st.

The Samsung Unpacked event starts at 11AM local Berlin time, that being 4AM Central Standard Time — aka you'll either need to be getting a good night's rest beforehand or you'll want to bust out the old 2 liter of SURGE to stay up all night. Already in the mix we've got confirmation that there'll be a Samsung Galaxy S II and Galaxy Tab 8.9, both of them with LTE, the GSII with an expanded display and upgraded processor. Next there's the Samsung Galaxy Q, a 5.3-inch tablet/phone hybrid from outer space.

Next there's the mysterious Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 alongside the other leaked devices including the Galaxy Note and the Wave 3 (powered by Bada.) There's a whole new line of low to mid-tier Android devices on the way, plus we've got some sweet teaser videos for Unpacked that may well reveal what we already know to be true:

Here's the second video first:

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Then the first video next:

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For LG we've got a couple of tips, the first being for some fabulous new monitors, the second being for a cool new 3D game conversion engine for smartphones. Toshiba has what's possibly a brand new super-thin Android tablet in the works. HTC will likely give us more information on the HTC Puccini tablet. Very likely we'll see some manner of Mango Phone from Microsoft's Windows Phone line.

Join us all this next week via our [IFA 2011] portal.

And don't forget to join us tomorrow for the official reveal of the USA Samsung Galaxy S II family over in New York City. A full week coming up this week!