Lenovo presents a Microsoft Surface look-alike at IFA 2015-- the ideapad Miix 700, a 12-inch Windows 10 tablet complete with built-in kickstand and magnetically-attachable keyboard accessory.

The kickstand is actually one of the more interesting features of the tablet, since it has what Lenovo says are dual watchband hinges. Similar to the hinges in the Lenovo Yoga tablets, these allow the tablet to stand from 0 to 160-degrees.

Meanwhile the keyboard accessory doubles as a screen protector and comes complete with a stylus users can connect to a spare USB port.

LG previews a tablet offering set to make an IFA 2015 appearance-- the G Pad II 10.1, a 10-.1-inch Android tablet featuring a 1920x1200 resolution display and a 2.26GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 CPU.

Further specifications include 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage (expandable via microSD slot), 5MP rear-/2MP front-facing cameras and a 7400mAH battery, all inside "soft metallic finish" casing. Connectivity comes through wifi and LTE.

The independent Vaio appears to be finding some success in Japan-- so much so the company plans to make an international comeback through the launch Windows 10 versions of its Z series laptops in the US and Brazil.

"We are not interested in cheap models for everyone," CEO of Vaio owner Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) Yoshimi Ota tells the Wall Street Journal. As such, the company plans to sell pricier niche devices rather than attempt to appeal to the mass market.

The first Vaio device to make the leap to the US is indeed a niche device-- the Z Canvas is a "monster tablet" featuring a detachable 12-inch 2560x1704 resolution display, stylus input, a built-in kickstand and specifications including an i7 CPU, 256GB SSD and up to 16GB RAM.

IDC reports the W. European tablet market reaches stability of sorts in Q2 2015 as shipments reach 7.5 million with 1.2% Y-o-Y decline-- the softest since the downturn started at the beginning of 2014.

Leading to such results is the combination of weak consumer demand for tablets and growing commercial interest in 2-in-1 devices. As such, regular tablet shipments are down by -4.4% Y-o-Y while 2-in-1s see 71% Y-o-Y growth, even if 2-in-1 volume remains relatively small with overall share reaching 7.3% of the total Q2 2015 market.

“The most notable new 2-in-1 model is probably the Microsoft Surface 3, a smaller and more affordable version of Surface Pro 3, but other new 2-in-1s were introduced by well-established international players as well as several local or sub-regional vendors," the analyst says. "The latter not only contributed to broaden the 2-in-1 offering but, thanks to the strength of their brand at a local level and the usually lower price points of their products, also helped boost the volume of the market for detachable devices, where their share jumped sequentially from below 1% to over 4%.”

Intel announces the Xeon server processor lineup will find use in somewhat smaller hardware-- notebooks, as the Xeon E3-1500M v5 family promises "workstation-class capabilities in a portable device."

Based on Skylake architecture, Xeon E3-1500M v5 features "key features" such as error-correcting code memory for enchanted reliability and Intel vPro hardware-assisted security, manageability and productivity. Connectivity comes through Thunderbolt 3, or as Intel puts it "the USB-C that does it all."

Global tablet shipments fall by -7% Y-o-Y (or -3.9% Q-o-Q) to reach 447 million units during Q2 2015 IDC reports, a quarter marked by little in terms of either hardware innovation or vendor portfolio updates.

"Beyond the decline, we're seeing a profound shift in the vendor landscape as the top two vendors, Apple and Samsung, lose share in the overall market," the analyst remarks. "In Q1 2015, Apple and Samsung accounted for 45% of the market and this quarter, with the growth of vendors like LG, Huawei, and E FUN, their combined share dropped to 41%. Each of the growing vendors managed to address available pockets of growth in the market; connected tablets for LG and Huawei, larger tablets and 2-in-1s in the right price bands for E FUN."

Samsung announces the Galaxy Tab S2-- a tablet in either 9.7- or 8-inch sizes featuring what the company describes as "the thinnest and lightest metal frame of its size on the market."

For the record, the tablet is 5.6mm thick and weighs 389g in its 9.7-inch form and 265g in 8-inch. Both variants are otherwise identical, having 2048x1536 resolution Super AMOLED displays and an octacore application processor combining quad 1.9GHz + quad 1.3GHz processors.

Amazon updates the Kindle Paperwhite with a higher-resolution display-- one handling 300 pixels per inch, twice the resolution of the original Paperwhite and as sharp as the more premium Kindle Voyage.

Further Paperwhite upgrades include a new font, dubbed Bookerly, and an improved typesetting engine Amazon says allows for larger text sizes without annoying hyphenation and spacing, as well as dynamically adjustable drop caps, text and images.

To ensure the company is serious on such matters the announcement even has a whole paragraph on kerning and ligatures.