It's that time of year when companies are launching their latest gadgets to entice shoppers ahead of the holidays.

The IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin is a showcase for the latest technology with giants including Samsung, Sony and Huawei unveiling their latest wares.

CNBC runs through some of the biggest launches over the past week.

Samsung launched the Gear S3 smartwatch at IFA as it looked to steal a march on Apple and the heavily anticipated update of its wearable tech.

The Gear S3 has a rotating bezel, it runs Samsung's own operating system, Tizen, a number of sensors, and a three-to-four-day battery life.

The Gear S3 will be shipped in the fourth quarter of 2016.

At IFA, Sony unveiled a 3,300 euro ($3,680) gold-plated Walkman music player as the Japanese electronics giant focuses on higher-end products in its audio division.

The device can handle any music file from high-resolution sound to MP3 files.

Huawei launched two smartphones at IFA – the 5-inch Nova and 5.5-inch Nova Plus devices.

They are mid-tier smartphones aimed at helping Huawei challenge Samsung, aggressively build market share, and find growth in a slowing smartphone market.

Qualcomm launched its a chipset and virtual reality headset at IFA which it hopes will make it a player in the fast-growing sector.

The so-called reference design is a chipset and wireless headset that other companies can use for their own products.

Reference designs are often made by companies like Qualcomm in order to show potential customers the capabilities of the technology and how their chipsets could be used.

The Chinese drone-maker unveiled what could be the ultimate selfie stick at IFA last week.

The Osmo Mobile is a handheld device that users clip on to their smartphones. Using the company's DJI Go app, users can then carry out a range of complex camera functions.

One feature is "active track" which allows a user to select a moving object and the device will automatically move to make sure that the point selected is always in focus, allowing smooth panning and other camera movements.

The device costs $299.

Sony's latest flagship smartphones – the 5.2 inch Xperia XZ and the 4.6 inch Xperia X Compact – focus on the device's camera, which has three sensors, one of which is a laser capable of measuring distances in low light conditions allowing a quick focus.

It also has smart battery technology to help stop the cells wearing out.

At IFA, LG created a tunnel made out of its organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TVs to showcase the technology it hopes will help it beat rival Samsung.

OLED technology is a single sheet of material that glows colors when electricity is pumped through it. The advantage is that individual pixels on a screen can be shut off allowing for absolute blacks.

This is useful for high dynamic range (HDR) content, which are images shot in a way that make the blacks darker and whites brighter.

Samsung unveiled the 88-inch KS9800 TV at IFA. It uses quantum dot technology, which is different to the OLED material used by LG.

Liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs work by a backlight shining through some color filters to produce an image on the screen. But this process can lead to a lot of light being lost, imperfect colors and not enough contrasting colors.

Samsung's solution is to put a sheet of "quantum dots" - particles - in between this process. These particles light up to display more perfect colors when a certain shade of light is shone on them. This can allow the TV to produce brighter colors.

Lenovo's take on the tablet is a new 2-in-1 with a detachable touch keyboard.

The Yoga Book comes with a stylus that's shaped like a pen. It has interchangeable nibs. One is a stylus tip to use on the tablet's screen and the other is an ink nib which enables users to write notes in ink, which can be converted by the Yoga Book into digital notes on the screen.

Lenovo is selling a magnetic clipboard that attaches to the Yoga Book's touch keyboard. Once it's attached, the tablet will recognize it and users can write notes on the paper which will simultaneously become digital.

Fossil showed off its Fossil Q Marshal and Fossil Q Wander smartwatches at IFA. At the event, the watchmaker announced that Snapdragon Wear 2100 would power its devices.

Chinese electronics maker ZTE unveiled the 5.2-inch AXON 7 Mini at IFA with a focus on the sound quality from the phone's speaker.

The company also said it collaborated with Designworks, a BMW subsidiary, to come up with the design which is inspired by a racecar.

Sony's Xperia Agent is a competitor to Amazon's Echo - a digital personal assistant that sits in the home, connects to different devices and can control them.

It's a concept design at the moment, but Sony announced at IFA that it had partnered with Nestle Japan to allow the Xperia Agent to connect with the Swiss firm's coffee machines so users can make coffee by just talking to it.

The $99.95 Fitbit Flex 2 is slimmer than its predecessor and, for the first time, enables users to track their swimming.

The $149.95 Fitbit Charge 2 has a bigger screen than the previous version.

It adds two new major features: A guided breathing setting to promote mindfulness and relaxation, and a cardio fitness feature to let users see how fit they are, based on their individual profile, heart rate and exercise data.