Top 10 products to look forward to in 2011

If little is known about Motorola's Android 3.0 tablet, even less is known about the rumoured webOS tablet from HP/Palm. Although HP did release a Windows 7 tablet aimed at enterprises earlier this year, it's still only available in the US...

Our interest is peaked by the prospect of a webOS-equipped tablet. Although we were excited by webOS when it was first released, it's quickly becoming an also-ran in the smartphone market given the stiff competition it faces from iOS, Windows Phone 7 and the constantly improving Android.

If a webOS tablet is in the works, hopefully it will be a dramatic improvement over existing tablets, rather than a me-too device like the underwhelming Palm Pre 2 smartphone.

Windows Phone 7 update

We were both impressed and frustrated with Windows Phone 7, the latest version of Microsoft's smartphone operating system. Although attractive and innovative, it's also missing some useful features we'd expect to see in any modern smartphone operating system, such as copy and paste and multitasking in third-party apps.

At least some of these flaws, such as the lack of copy and paste, will be remedied in a forthcoming update due from Microsoft in the new year. An even bigger update, Windows Phone 7.5 if you will, is rumoured for the middle of next year. We hope it's a corker, because none of the company's numerous competitors in the cutthroat smartphone market will be standing still.

Check out our Windows Phone 7 coverage here.

Google Nexus S

Although Google's successor to the Nexus One smartphone has technically already been released, the Nexus S is in short supply and won't be available in significant quantities until the new year.

This is a shame as it's the first Android smartphone to come with Android 2.3 and a near field communications chip. It's the most desirable Android phone yet, if only because it will receive the very latest Android operating system updates as soon as they're released.

Check out our first look video preview of the Nexus S here.

Intel Sandy Bridge

Intel is set to debut its latest range of processors (code-named Sandy Bridge) at CES in January 2011. These 32nm processors are the first to have an integrated graphics chip built into the same piece of silicon as the processor itself.

The 2000-series of desktop and laptop Core i3, i5 and i7 processors should be significantly faster than their previous generation counterparts, although details of the server-specific versions have yet to be released.

We expect almost all new PCs and laptops released in 2011 to have a Sandy Bridge processor. AMD has its work cut out for them.