BARCELONASamsung on Sunday night announced the Samsung Galaxy S II phone and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, a new Android-powered cell phone and tablet that both feature dual-core processors.

We spent a little while with both devices at Mobile World Congress, and while they're impressive, they aren't mind-blowing. Samsung's phone rocked America with a new level of Android elegance, and the was the first decent Android tablet. These devices enter a much more competitive marketplace. But they're both physically beautiful, which may make the difference.

Samsung Galaxy S II

First, the phone. The Galaxy S II feels a bit like the Samsung Infuse 4G for AT&T, with its super-thin body and textured back. It uses a new Samsung dual-core processor rather than the Nvidia model I've seen elsewhere, and it's much thinner and more elegant than the other dual-core phones I've seen so far, which include the Motorola , and . At 0.33 inches, it may actually be the thinnest phone on the U.S. market. That is, if it ever comes to U.S. shores - this evening's announcement specifically excludes the USA.

The Galaxy S II's 4.27-inch, 800-by-480 Super AMOLED Plus screen looks rich and beautiful; colors seem super-saturated. It's not as high-res as the Motorola Atrix's 960-by-540, though. The phone has a 2-megapixel camera on the front and an 8-megapixel camera capable of 1080p video capture on the back. Interest access is fast with an HSPA+ 21 modem. The Galaxy S II will come in 16- and 32-GB models (there's also a memory card slot under the back cover) and NFC, interestingly, is an option.

The phone runs Samsung's TouchWiz skin over Android 2.3 Gingerbread, and Samsung has poured a lot of new apps into the new version. Samsung used to have Media Hub and Social Hub. Now, it also has Reading Hub (which includes the PressReader newspaper app and the Kobo e-book app), Music Hub (a music store) and Games Hub, an alternative to Android Market for games that are so big that Google won't allow them in the market. How that will interact or overlap with Nvidia's very similar Tegra Zone remains to be seen.

There's also some fresh software here from Cisco: this will be one of the first Android phones to actually run a Cisco VPN client, and it also has enterprise Wi-Fi calling and WebEx login capabilities.

The phone I handled was extremely pre-release, so I can't make any promises about performance. Samsung did make a promise about upgrades, though, with reps saying that the ongoing disaster involving upgrading the current Galaxy S line to Android 2.2 "will never happen again."

The more I think about the Galaxy S II, the more I like it. That doesn't surprise me; the Galaxy S grew on me too, eventually becoming my personal phone. If Samsung can bring this to market quickly and solve their upgrade problem, they may have the best balance of power and style on the market. The Galaxy S will arrive this month in Europe and Asia; Samsung isn't announcing U.S. plans.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Okay, okay, so my first question was, "what happened to the other nine product versions?" The new companion - not successor - to the Samsung Galaxy Tab runs Android 3.0 Honeycomb on a 10.1-inch screen, and physical design is clearly the big punch for this device.

The tablet itself is an Nvidia Tegra 2, dual-core gadget running a pure Google version of Honeycomb with no software extensions, so it'll be hard for Samsung to distinguish itself from the Motorola Xoom and LG G-Slate on performance. (Both of those tablets have similar innards.) The software experience is a Honeycomb experience  lots of floating icons and a reliance on big, live widgets dominating a multiple-panel home screen. It's much more complicated than the iPad, but quite good looking.

What matters most here is what the Tab 10.1 is like to handle. The Tab 10.1 is very thin (.44 inches) and made of classy materials, with a textured plastic back that is much easier to grip and less slippery than the 7-inch tablet. I have mixed feelings about the embossed silver "Samsung" badge on the back, but considering I carried around a cherry-red netbook for a year that had an embossed "Samsung" badge, I'm probably not one to talk. It feels very good, not very heavy at 21 ounces, but indeed very large; the 10.1-inch, 1280-by-720 screen is bigger than the iPad's.

Other specs: an 8-megapixel camera on the back and a 2-megapixel one on the front, HSPA+ 21 cellular networking with no voice calling, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, and either 16 or 32GB of storage. All this is backed by a pretty large 6860 mAh battery, but remember, that battery has to power that screen; Samsung didn't give a battery life estimate.

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is going to set up a very interesting battle of the tablets here in the US, if it does indeed come here. It's the biggest tablet coming to market, but I'll be curious to see if it becomes any carrier's champion. Verizon has the Xoom, T-Mobile has the G-Slate, and Sprint is going its own way with the BlackBerry PlayBook. Will the Galaxy Tab 10.1 be AT&T's declaration of independence from the iPad?

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 will be coming to Vodafone customers in Europe in March. There are, so far, no plans for a U.S. version or a Wi-Fi-only version, Samsung reps said.