Folding screens and 5G: what's coming in smartphones in 2019?
From the launch of 5G to phones with large folding screens, more cameras and fingerprint scanners under the screens, 2019 looks set to transform the smartphone in more ways than one.
2018 produced phones with notches hiding selfie cameras and sensors in the top of the screen. While not quite the innovation most were likely seeking, notches allowed manufacturers to remove everything from the front that wasn’t screen.
Now that the smartphone is essentially all screen on the front and a slab of glass on the back, what’s next for phone innovation?
Hole-punch cameras
Notches are an ugly necessity at the moment – everyone but Apple agrees
– as the camera has to go somewhere. But they don’t have to be large intrusive bars.
2019 will see new hole-punch screens , which literally have small holes in the display through which the selfie camera pokes. Huawei has already announced two phones with a diminutive hole in the display, as has Samsung with its Galaxy A8
With more devices expected to follow, it appears 2019 will be the year of the punch-hole display
Fingerprint scanners in the screen.
What was long seen as the holy grail of biometric systems, the fingerprint scanner embedded into the screen finally became a reality in the mass market at the end of 2018 with the OnePlus 6T and Huawei Mate 20 Pro.
Strictly speaking, the scanners are under the display, reading the ridges on your thumb or finger through the pixels of your screen. The current generation optical sensors are to be joined by improved ultrasonic sensors next year in a variety of phones.
Sea of Sameness.
When all you have is a screen on the front and camera on the back, there’s not much to differentiate one model from the next in terms of design.
“The rectangular touchscreen has become the dominant design for smartphones and there is little sign of that changing anytime soon,” says Ben Wood, chief of research at CCS Insight.
If you were hoping for a radical new design in 2019, you might be out of luck.
5G and super expensive phones.
5G will finally launch in 2019 with faster data and ever more expensive phones. But it won’t just be 5G phones pushing up the price. The cost of phones in the top-end market dominated by Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy S series is expected to continue to rise.
“Don’t be surprised to see the £2,000 phone in 2019 – the advent of 5G, premium materials, perhaps foldable devices and more will see the emergence of a new ultra-premium segment,” says Wood. “Apple has let the way on smartphone inflation and we expect manufacturers to keep pushing the boundaries – particularly as people hold on to their phones for longer.”
Chinese battle at £500.
If you can’t stomach paying £1,000 for a phone, there is hope. With a new super-premium category, the market for slightly more competitive devices that offer top-performance is likely to expand.
OnePlus has proved the niche exists with top-end phones costing under £500 in UK. Now it has been joined by Chinese rival Xiaomi and it aggressively priced top end phones, alongside the increasing sales of Honor, Huawei’s cheaper sub-brand.
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