With 2018 coming to an end, the smartphone launch season of the year has also ended. Now OEMs are working on their 2019 flagships filled with innovative new features to attract consumers. Since the smartphone market is slowing down, it is now more important than ever for companies to come up with innovative features to allure customers.

1. 5G

Smartphone OEMs are going to heavily push 5G as the buzzword for their 2019 flagship phones to entice users to upgrade to them. Contrary to what the marketing blitz might lead you to believe, 5G networks in Europe and the U.S. is far from ready. They are still in nascent stages at best and they still have a long way to go. And some carriers like AT&T are even updating older non-5G Android smartphones to show a fake 5G icon.

More importantly, while we will see 5G phones debut in 2019, they will be not without their fair share of issues. 5G phones are going to be thicker and heavier than their 4G counterpart. They are also going to be power hungry which means the first batch of 5G phones is going to offer poor battery life. Sounds familiar? This is because the same thing happened when the first wave of 4G phones hit the market. Despite all the marketing blitz, it took almost 1-2 years to solve these issues with 4G phones and in all likelihood, a similar scene is going to play out here as well.

5G networks will offer faster download/upload speeds at lower latency. It will also allow for always-connected cars, drones, and give IoT devices the boost they require. It could allow surgeons to remotely control machines and perform surgeries despite being hundreds of miles away.

What about Apple?

Well, it took Apple almost two years after Android OEMs implemented Gigabit LTE to offer the same feature in iPhones. The company also took its own sweet time to bring 4G connectivity to iPhones. Apple is known to adopt a technology once it is mature enough and so the Cupertino company is unlikely to offer 5G connectivity on iPhones until 2020 or later.

2. 12GB RAM

2018 saw plenty of phones launch with massive 8GB RAM and that’s a trend that will continue in 2019 as well. It is not like 8GB RAM in a smartphone is useful but it provides an OEM with bragging rights. And for that sole reason, we are going to see some OEMs launch devices with up to 10/12GB RAM. OnePlus has already launched the OnePlus 6T McLaren Edition this year with 10GB RAM and other Chinese OEMs will continue this trend in 2019. They will not offer 10GB of RAM in the primary variant of their mainstream device but they will offer at least one variant of their flagship phone with oodles of storage and 12GB RAM.

10GB RAM in 2019 iPhones?

Having 8GB or 10GB RAM in a smartphone is impractical right now. Neither iOS nor Android is capable of utilizing 8GB or 10GB RAM properly and neither are the apps that are available for them.

Knowing Apple, it is highly unlikely that it will ship any variant of its 2019 iPhones with 12GB or even 8/10GB RAM. Sure, it might bump the RAM on the 2019 iPhones to 6GB if iOS 13 comes with some massive changes but anything above that is not going to happen.

3. Multi-Camera Setup

We have already seen the likes of Huawei P20 Pro and Mate 20 Pro launch with a triple-camera setup at the rear. However, 2019 is the year when triple-camera setup in smartphones will become mainstream. And it makes a lot of sense as well. A primary shooter paired with a telephoto sensor for optical zoom and an ultra-wide shooter to fit as much of a scene in a photo as possible.

2019 iPhones with Triple-Camera Setup?

There are rumors of Apple switching to a triple-camera setup for its 2019 iPhones. However, it is still too early to tell if there’s any weight to these rumors or not.

4. 50W Fast Wired Charging

Huawei has already debuted its 50W fast wired charging solution dubbed SuperCharge with Mate 20 Pro and the technology is likely to trickle down to its other devices in 2019. With SuperCharge, the Mate 20 Pro charges from 0-100 percent in just over an hour, while it takes only around 15 minutes to charge from 0-50 percent.

What about Apple?

Apple added support 18W fast charging tech to its iPhone lineup with the iPhone X and iPhone 8 in 2017. Given how long it took the company to implement the feature on iPhones, it is unlikely that we will see the company implement an even faster charging solution on its iPhone lineup in the next year or two.

5. In-display Fingerprint Scanner

In-display fingerprint scanners first came to the spotlight before the release of the iPhone X in 2017. It was rumored that Apple was going to launch the iPhone X with an in-display fingerprint scanner. We all know how that turned out to be. Nonetheless, since then, we have seen quite a few phones hit the market featuring an in-display fingerprint scanner. 

In 2019, we are going to see in-display fingerprint scanner become commonplace in flagship and premium mid-range smartphones. They are also going to get faster and offer improved accuracy as the sensor gets better with every new iteration. Apple has completely given up on the fingerprint scanner in favor of Touch ID and even in its in-display form, the fingerprint scanner is not going to make a return to the iPhone lineup.

6. Displays without the Dreaded Notch

Notches are a temporary solution until the technology comes around to hide the front-facing camera and relevant sensors below the display. Until that happens, we are seeing OEMs either adopt the notch or come up with some innovative solutions to avoid it.

The latest in the quest to avoid the notch is punch-hole displays. These displays literally have a hole in them to accommodate the selfie camera. We have already seen Huawei and Samsung announce phones with a punch-hole display but it is in 2019 that this tech will become mainstream. While it does not exactly get rid of the notch, there’s no denying the fact that this is a novel solution to the problem.

Will Apple adopt Punch-Hole Displays on iPhones?

Unlikely. This is because punch-hole displays only have enough space for the selfie camera. There’s no space to accommodate other sensors that are required for Face ID to work properly.

7. Foldable Phones

Samsung has already demoed a near-final version of its foldable smartphone last month and the company is expected to release one to the public in limited quantities next year. While foldable phones sound cool in theory — you can fold your device into a smartphone and unfold it into a tablet when needed, a lot about them still remains unknown.

It is unclear how good their displays are going to be, how thick they are going to be, and just how well they would work in real life. Its a technology that sounds good on paper but how well it will work in real life is something that is yet to be seen. Apart from Samsung, Huawei is also expected to unveil a foldable smartphone in 2019.

Source: iPhonehacks