Turns out that I was lucky. Samsung later removed all the Tab 7.7s from the show, presumably for reasons relating to Apple’s ongoing patent case over the Galaxy Tab. Here’s FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller with some details. (In Germany, Apple has an injunction against Samsung that prevents it from selling the Tab 10.1 here.)

Samsung apparently doesn’t plan to sell the 7.7 in the U.S., a move that Mueller speculates could be spurred by the Galaxy Tab line’s legal woes. I’m not a patent lawyer and am not taking a stance on the case, but I’ll be sorry if the 7.7 can’t make it into the market. From a hardware standpoint, at least, it’s the nicest 7″ (or thereabouts) tablet I’ve seen. I’d like to see consumers get the chance to embrace it or reject it as they see fit.

[Full disclosure: I spoke on a panel at IFA, and the conference organizers covered my travel costs.]

Way back when, LG introduced a refrigerator that–for reasons which were unclear at the time–ran Windows 98. The company’s still at it. As I wandered around the numerous halls at the IFA electronics trade show here in Berlin, I stumbled on LG’s booth, where a demo of its Smart ThinQ appliances (which, I assume, are powered by something other than Windows 98) was in progress.

The line includes a refrigerator, a washing machine, a microwave oven, and a robotic vacuum cleaner; all use Wi-Fi to connect to the Net and work with smartphone apps. For instance, you can manage a shopping list on the fridge and zap it to your phone and back. (The fridge screen also runs Facebook and various entertainment apps.) You can download new wash cycles from your phone to the washing machine, as well as adjust the cycle on the fly. And you can use a smartphone app to download receipes to the oven.

If nothing else, I admire LG for showing patience with this concept. Wonder how many of the appliances they’re selling, and whether folks continue to use the techy features after the novelty wears off?

A couple more photos after the jump. (Full disclosure: I spoke at IFA on a panel, and the conference orgaziners covered my travel costs.)

Last year, I attended the IFA consumer-electronics megaconference in Berlin. The exhibitions of the big manufacturers were utterly dominated by 3D TVs. All that blurry 3D hurt my eyeballs, put me in a bad mood, and prompted this rant.

This year, I’m back in Berlin for IFA. There’s still scads of 3D, but it’s not quite as omnipresent as last year. Whether companies are losing interest or simply recalibrating their expectations to something more in line with consumers’ level of interest in this stuff, I’m not sure.

Is 2011 3D TV better than 2010 3D TV? Yes, at least a tad. Last year, the most pleasing 3D I saw was at Panasonic’s booth; this year, their demos struck me as being even a little better. (I like to make fun of the demonstation shown at the top of the post, but the displays showing 3D TV versions of the performing ladies were some of the crispest active-shutter 3D I’ve seen.)

I also liked LG’s huge booth, which was almost entirely devoted to passive 3D TV, a technology that’s just starting to give active-shutter serious competition. Passive 3D uses cheap glasses like the ones at movie theaters, not the unaffordable electronic ones required for active 3D. To my eyes, the best LG sets delivered picture qualiy in the same ballpark as decent active-shutter sets. And when an LG hostess saw that I wear eyeglasses, she handed me clip-on 3D lenses rather than glasses–and boy, they practically brought tears of joy to my eyes. For the first time in my life, I was able to see 3D without forcing one set of glasses over my own glasses. Much better. (Movie theaters back home in the U.S.: Get these clip-ons!)

In theory, the show’s biggest 3D news was probably Toshiba’s launch of the 55-inch ZL2, its first big set based on the glassses-free technology I saw in experimental form back at CES in January. The technology has improved since then, but you could tell that it requires a controlled environment: Toshiba showed it to only three attendees at a time, on seating squished up right in front of the set in a darkened room. Even then, most of the stuff we saw was distressingly gritty-looking.

(Did I mention that the ZL2 will cost 8000 Euros, or about $11,500?)

I came away from all this feeling like the people most excited by 3D TV are the ones trying to sell it to consumers. Even at its best, it adds severe image defects: blurriness, graininess, dimness, or some combination thereof. It’s still really a two-and-a-half dimensional effect that doesn’t actually make anything look more like real life. It remains most impressive for gimmicky moments–basseballs coming right at you, people inexplicably throwing buckets of water at the camera–that exist only to show off 3D.

My best guess is that 3D is going to rapidly became something that’s just there. It’ll be built into your next TV, won’t cost anything extra, and will be available if you want it and invisibile if you don’t. I hope it continues to improve, but I don’t expect any gigantic breakthroughs that make the experience radically better.

For now, I think that good 2D HD gives an effect that’s much, much closer to real life than any 3D. If all we had was 3D and 2D was invented in 2011, we’d regarded it as a breakthrough.

[Disclaimer: I spoke at an IFA panel, and the conference organizers covered the cost of my travel.]

A company called Vogel’s was showing neat remote-controlled mounts for flat-screen TVs. I hope that the Yellow Pages people don’t get wind of Vogel’s slogan, though:

If you told me that Toyota was exhibiting at CES in Las Vegas, I’d assume they were showing off something like a Prius with built-in Wi-Fi. The company was at IFA–but it was with their sewing machines (which, I just learned, are also available in the U.S.):

IFA had a “Room of Silence.” I didn’t visit it and am not positive what it was, but if it’s anything like what I’m thinking it might be, I think every gigantic tradeshow should have one:

I didn’t make use of any of them myself–I was in a rush, and have forgotten nearly all of my two years of college German–but I did take a few snapshots of one of them…

When some of us American journalists dropped by, we saw four kids deeply engaged in using Asus’s eee PCs–and ignoring a One Laptop Per Child XO laptop that was sitting off to one side. That may or may not be a commentary on the relative appeal of the two low-cost notebooks, but it makes for an interesting photo:

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Beko had a booth full of pretty generic looking TVs and other products, but in a world chock-full of electronics companies with pompous taglines, liked its slogan: “Buy It Before It Becomes Famous”:

American domestic robot manufacturer Ugobe wasn’t just at the show with its Pleo dinosaur–it brought along a cool giant-sized Pleo:

IFA isn’t as thick with booth entertainment as an American show like U.S., but it wasn’t entirely devoid of it, either. I never quite figured out what a company called 2DF did, but its giant walkaround mascot was downright adorable:

Becker had an in-dash navigation system called the Indianapolis Pro–and while I assume it refers to the Indy 500, it was still startling and entertaining to see a German product named after a midwestern American city:

Here at IFA, there’s yet another Monster on the show floor. This one makes…$1200 ironing board/iron combos that blast your laundry with more steam than I’ve ever seen in my life. As far as I know, this one doesn’t sell its products in the U.S., at least under the Monster name–which is probably just as well. Even though the product looked kind of nifty. At least for those who’d spend $1200 to keep their clothes looking sharp.

Here’s a Monster employee demoing the company’s wares by pressing the jacket of CBS News’s Larry Magid: