As we saw at CES last month, the consumer electronics industry seems to be firmly fixed upon the tablet craze at the moment, with avalanches of these devices being brought to market by an increasing number of manufacturers. Now a slew of new tablets have stepped forth for their shot at fame at the Mobile World Congress recently held in Barcelona, Spain.

LG Optimus Pad1. LG Optimus Pad

First up is LG's new Optimus Pad, already glimpsed at CES but now finally receiving a full reveal. The 8.9" tablet will sport a roomy 1280 x 720 pixel WXGA resolution wide-screen display, which is sure to equal in some outstanding display quality. This is further enhanced by 1080p HD video decoding and an HDMI port, meaning you can view HD content on your TV display. The tablet will support native 3D content, although users will need to be wearing 3D glasses to see it. That said, it is able to record in 3D thanks to a dual camera at the back.

Nvidia's powerful Tegra 2 1 GHz dual-core processor will be doing duty on the CPU side, while it also runs on Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), built from the ground up specifically for tablets.

Toshiba Tablet2. Toshiba Tablet

Toshiba also announced a new tablet device, with a 10.1" 1280 x 800 pixel capacitive touch-screen doing duty in addition to running on Android 3.0 Honeycomb. The tablet is at this stage only known as the "Toshiba Tablet" and will be powered by a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor. Toshiba's Resolution+ technology promises to increase display quality on the HD (720p) screen, while a gyroscope, accelerometer, GPS and two cameras (two megapixel front, five megapixel rear) is also included. An HDMI port is available for viewing HD content on other devices and a USB 2.0 port and SD card reader are also called into service. As far as connectivity goes the Toshiba Tablet is slated to support 802.11n Wi-Fi.

HTC Flyer3. HTC Flyer

Taiwanese manufacturer HTC finally jumped aboard the tablet bandwagon with its HTC Flyer. The Flyer will be powered by a 1 GHz Qualcomm processor and will feature 1 GB worth of RAM and 32 GB of onboard storage space. In addition, a 7" 1024 x 600 capacitive touch-screen will be doing display duties with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and HSPA+ support also said to be included, with 3G rumoured. HTC also saw fit to do some extra work in the stylus department, with users not receiving just a plain sliver of plastic, but instead a pen that can sync with apps such as Evernote to enable users to write, draw pictures, serve as highlighter while you read or even link audio content to your work so it can be read back to you.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.14. Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Samsung, first to market here in SA with their Galaxy Tab tablet, introduced a beefed-up new version, the Galaxy Tab 10.1. The name simply refers to the new 10.1" WXGA display with which the tablet is imbued, much bigger than the previous version's 7" one. The tablet will also be powered by a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor and will feature 1080p HD video recording, an eight megapixel camera at the back and another two megapixel snapper at the front. In addition it will be available with either 16 GB or 32 GB of data storage space and will come with onboard Wi-Fi and HSPA+ support. [JK]