Our predictions for Android in 2019: Foldable phones, 5G, and much more

[Android Central]( [2019 is going to be a very exciting year for Android]( These are the trends that will emerge over the course of the year. 2018 was a good year for smartphones. Not because of one show-stealing feature or an altogether new innovation, but because the whole smartphone world got really good. But in 2019, we see a year in Android that will be slightly different — a "tock" cycle of altogether new technology and innovations hitting the market, rather than a "tick" of a rising tide that lifts all ships. Here's what you can look forward to over the course of the year. There's plenty to look forward to over the course of 2019. 2019 will be, finally, the year of the transition to consumer-ready 5G networks. We've been hearing the hype and promises for a couple years now, but carriers are finally putting their cell sites where their marketing is. Verizon and AT&T are leading the 5G charge in the U.S., and dozens of carriers around the world are doing the same in their respective countries. 5G that's currently limited to fixed home-based internet service and large dedicated mobile hotspots right now will make its way into phones throughout 2019, and the number of markets where 5G is available will go from a handful to dozens. But the transition to 5G will unfortunately be slow, convoluted and ultimately confusing — just like the move from CDMA and HSPA (3G) to LTE (4G). We'll still be using LTE for years to come as the backbone of cellphone networks while 5G is rolled out, as 5G will take several years to deploy fully and even when "finished" will still rely on LTE for rural network deployments. The dreaded notch is going away We pointed out last year that getting frustrated over notches isn't worth our time, because they'll soon be reduced and then disappear as quickly as they arrived. 2019 is the year for the start of this transition away from notches. Notches are getting smaller, they're changing shape, and in some cases they aren't really "notches" at all. 2019's notches will be in the corner(s) of the display, they'll be just barely larger than the components they contain, or they'll be just a hole in the display rather than a full-on notch. All of these new designs are less intrusive, less annoying and take up less of your display. A prototypical top-dead-center notch will remain for some time, particularly at the mid-range price segments where phones get years-old tech that trickles down. But at the high end we'll see fewer large notches and more innovative screen shapes and cutouts that more graciously integrate the cameras and sensors we need to have. We'll finally see foldable phones Samsung will release a foldable phone in 2019, and it won't be alone. This is the next frontier for smartphones, because as soon as the technology can be shrunk down to a pocketable size, it just makes sense. Our insatiable appetite for larger screens has made phones too big to fit in our hands and our pockets, yet we keep wanting more screen real estate, more features and larger batteries. A foldable phone starts to solve the hand and pocket problem by letting a phone be compact when you need it to, then expand when you want more screen to see or interact with. The first foldable phones will be big, bulky and not all that enticing, much like the first big "phablet" phones, but don't get discouraged — foldable phone technology is exciting, and it has the potential to change what we consider to be a "smartphone" form factor. Say goodbye to the headphone jack Headphone jacks aren't dead. Far from it, in fact, particularly in all of the segments below the ultra-expensive flagships. But customers don't seem to mind missing the headphone jack too much, and keep buying phones without it — so companies keep putting out phones without one. The trend will continue in 2019, and you shouldn't ever assume that a company will make an about-face move and bring a headphone jack back to a model — when it's dead, it's dead. But this is really a symptom of smartphone makers wanting to simplify their hardware in a multitude of ways. First, it was removable batteries. Then, SD card slots, LED notification lights, headphone jacks, large speaker grills, and so on. Now it's buttons and ports of all kinds. The fewer openings there are in a thin phone's frame, the fewer failure points. Computational photography will be even more awesome One of the most consistently impressive improvements in smartphones through 2017 and 2018 was camera quality. Every smartphone over $150 has a pretty good camera, and the top-end models have truly excellent cameras. Nearly all of the improvement has come from what we refer to as "computational photography," or the idea that a series of deeply complex algorithms and processing generates photos rather than a basic sensor simply capturing what it sees. Google steals the limelight with its Night Sight feature that's a shining example of what computational photography can bring us, but the truth is that every phone is using some level of computation when it creates photos, and smartphones will only lean further on this technology in the year to come. Smartphones don't have any more room inside for larger cameras, but the software and processors inside are more than picking up the slack. With the right processing, a phone with a tiny sensor and simple lens can take photos that rival a DSLR. 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