Hollywood studios try to avoid opening big movies on the same weekend, to avoid diluting the buzz and the press coverage. “Oh, no — we can’t open that day,” one might say. “ ‘Titanic II: The Return’ is opening that weekend.”

That’s usually the way it works with the tech companies, too, especially as the holiday shopping season begins.

This year, though, a barrage of huge tech announcements all landed within about a week. Windows 8. Microsoft Surface. The iPad Mini. Google Chromebook. The Barnes & Noble Nook HD. Windows Phone 8. A 10-inch Samsung tablet and a new Google phone.

All right, tech industry. You want splintered news coverage? You got it. You get to share this column: one-third of a column each for the three big touch-screen headlines of the week. Meet the iPad Mini, Nook HD and Windows Phone 8.

The iPad Mini

The rumors were true: Apple now has a smaller iPad.

The iPad Mini is half the weight of the big iPad (0.7 pounds versus 1.4), thinner (. 28 inches versus .37), shorter (7.9 inches versus 9.5) and narrower (5.3 inches versus 7.3). Those specs add up to one towering meta-change: you can comfortably hold this iPad in one hand. It’s still too wide for a blazer pocket, alas, but it’s certainly purse-size and overcoat pocketable.

It’s available in white-and-silver and black-on-black, both with metal backs, both gorgeous.

Apple’s masterstroke was keeping the screen shape and resolution the same as on the iPad 2 (1,024 by 768 pixels). As a result, the Mini can run all 275,000 existing iPad apps unmodified, plus 500,000 more iPhone apps. The text and graphics are a little smaller, but perfectly usable.

Sadly, the Mini doesn’t gain Apple’s supercrisp Retina display. Nobody’s going to complain about the sharpness — it packs in 163 pixels per inch (ppi) — but it’s not the same jaw-dropping resolution as the big iPad (264 ppi). Gotta hold something back for next year’s model, right?

You pay $330 for the base model (16 gigabytes of storage, Wi-Fi connections). Prices run all the way up to $660 for four times the storage and the option to go online over the cell network.

By pricing the Mini so high, Apple allows the $200 class of seven-inch Android tablets and readers to live (Google Nexus, Kindle Fire HD, Nook HD). Those tablets also, by the way, have high-definition screens (1,280 by 800 pixels), which the Mini doesn’t.

But the iPad Mini is a far classier, more attractive, thinner machine. It has two cameras instead of one. Its fit and finish are far more refined. And above all, it offers that colossal app catalog, which Android tablet owners can only dream about.

Over all, the Mini gives you all the iPad goodness in a more manageable size, and it’s awesome. You could argue that the iPad Mini is what the iPad always wanted to be.

Barnes & Noble Nook HD

The redesign of this $200 e-book reader/video player focuses on the three things that matter most in a hand-held e-book reader: weight, size and screen clarity.

In those ways, the Nook HD trounces its nemeses, Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD and Google’s Nexus 7. The Nook is lighter (11.1 ounces, versus 12 on the Nexus and 13.9 on the Kindle) and noticeably narrower, despite the same-size screen, because it has a far slimmer bezel. You can wrap your hand around its back, even if you’re dainty of hand.

And the screen is much sharper: 1,440 by 900 pixels (versus 1,280 by 800). At 243 dots ppi, the Nook’s screen comes dangerously close to the iPad Retina’s 264 ppi. Wow, is this screen sharp. Movies, books and magazines pop.

Whites are so white on this screen, it could be a Clorox commercial; the Nexus and Kindle screens look yellowish in comparison. (A 9-inch, $270 version, the Nook HD+, is also available.)

The software continues to improve. You can now create up to five accounts, one for each family member, each listing different books and movies. (It doesn’t remember where each person stopped reading a given book, but B&N says that’s coming soon.)

The base-model, $200 Nook comes with only 8 gigabytes of storage — half as much as the Kindle; on the other hand, it has a memory-card slot, so it’s simple and cheap to expand. The Nook includes a wall charger (it can’t charge from a USB jack), which the Kindle doesn’t. And the Nook doesn’t display ads, as the $200 Kindle does.

However, there’s no camera at all. (The company says it spent the money on the nicer screen.) And the speaker volume is way too low during movie playback, but B&N says a fix is coming this week..

Still, in the hardware war, Nook HD clearly wins this round. The Nook HD is fast, fluid and gorgeous; the Fire HD lags in all of those categories.

Then again, Amazon’s movie service — rent, buy or stream for free as part of the $80-a-year Prime program — is mature and delightful; Barnes & Noble’s movie store is just starting up. If you can tolerate that fledgling store awhile, then you’ll love the way B&N exploited its second-mover advantage.

Windows Phone 8

The good news in touch screens continues with Windows Phone 8. It’s what you’ll get on sleek coming phones like the Nokia Lumia 920 and HTC’s Windows Phone 8X (the one I tested).

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 — a fresh, colorful, efficient, tile-based alternative to the icon-based design of iPhone and Android — earned rave reviews. But few phones run it and few people have it.

Windows Phone 8 may look identical, but the company says it’s a complete rewrite based on underlying code from Windows 8 for PCs. It’s therefore ready for far more hardware flexibility than 7 was: multi-core processors, screens with different resolutions, phones with memory cards and so on.

The Start screen is more customizable; you can choose from three different tile sizes. Apps can modify your Lock screen automatically; for example, the Groupon app might display a special offer that’s tailored to where you are right now.

If you swipe leftward from the Lock screen, you enter Kid Corner, a truly inspired idea. It’s a quarantined world containing only apps, music and videos that you’ve handpicked for your offspring. Next time you hear, “I’m bored — can I play on your phone?” you can hand the phone over without worry; the phone, Web and text messages are off-limits.

More solid improvements: The desktop software can load the phone with your iTunes music and video libraries. “Rooms” are private groups — Bowling Buddies, Teen Party and so on — whose members can share their locations, calendars, photos and chats. You can now back up the phone online.

Two juicy features are promised for the coming months: a “pay with your phone” option brought to you by NFC (near-field communication) chips in phones, and Data Sense, which tries to conserve Internet data and monitors your monthly allotment.

Microsoft’s phone software is fast, simple and beautiful. But it still lacks universal dictation for quick text entry. Its new Maps app doesn’t offer spoken directions (in 2012? seriously?). And the audience won’t come until there are more great apps.

There are promising signs; Microsoft says there are 110,000 Windows Phone apps, and that software companies can reuse chunks of code from their Windows 8 programs. That should make it easier to bring new apps to the phone.

So there you have it: three touch-screen tech toys, each triumphant in its own way. One comes from a market leader hoping to swipe business from its bargain-basement rivals; two come from underdogs determined to make a bigger dent.

None of these products are themselves perfect. But they represent new highs on the graph that plots price against polish and pleasure — and for gadget lovers, that portends some very merry holidays indeed.

PHOTOS: The iPad Mini, right, the Nook HD Plus, far right, and the Windows Phone 8, below, are all new introductions. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY JIM WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES; MARILYNN K. YEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (B9)

DRAWING (DRAWING BY STUART GOLDENBERG)