As previously announced Apple held its traditional September event-- one featuring the announcement of the much awaited iPad Pro, as well as the next iPhone generation, the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus.

Proceedings opened with talk on the Apple Watch. The company continues to refuse to provide any sales details, instead preferring to announce the Watch OS 2 update should be available from 16 September. The wearable also gets new models, such as a Hermes -designed number, a Red edition, and new aluminium and rose gold finishes. A selection of new bands will also be available, of course.

However the event's biggest news involves the iPad. Following talk on enterprise partnerships with IBM and Cisco the company revealed the iPad Pro. As repeatedly suggested repeatedly by rumours, the iPad Pro is the biggest (12.9-inch) and most powerful Apple tablet yet.  It is powered by a specially designed 64-bit A9X chip promising double the graphics, memory bandwidth and disk performance of the A8X, as well as 10 hours battery life, for "desktop-class performance." Audio comes through a 4-speaker array.

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.

Nextbit, a small mobile software startup founded by ex-HTC, Apple, Google and Amazon employees, plans to move into the mobile hardware business with a "provocative design" setting apart from the competition, Re/code reports.

“We want to set this off as something different,” former HTC design chief Scott Croyle tells Re/code. “We don’t have to be for everybody.”

Currently Nextbit is working on a transfer service called Baton-- a Handoff-style service allowing users to save and move work on apps running on different devices. The service requires preinstallation by device makers (rather than downloading by users), and so far has a partnership with CyanogenMod.