5 things we are excited about in 2018

This has been talked about since early last year — now that displays are taking such a huge portion of a phone's front, how do we get a fingerprint scanner on the handset's face? Should we forever be content with back-mounted scanners? Should we forget about fingerprints and only use Face ID and iris scanners?

Well, it's possible that we might get fingerprint scanners embedded in the glass. In fact, the technology has already been implemented into a phone by Chinese manufacturer Vivo. So, mainstream manufacturers shouldn't be far off, yes?

There have been tons of leaks about the Samsung foldable phone. It's either going to be a thing or at the very least Samsung is really, really trying to make it a thing. Conflicting reports are saying that either the first model is "almost ready", will be presented near the end of 2018, or that it has been delayed to 2019.

Whatever the case, we at least hope that we might get some sort of sneak peek at what Samsung wants to do with the technology by the end of this year. What would the purpose of that phone be? A foldable tablet that turns into a smartphone?

We can't be sure that this would actually happen, but a pretty legit-looking box leak has hinted heavily that the Galaxy S9 would have a variable aperture on its main camera. That means it can mechanically change from a super-wide F1.5 for macros to the landscape-friendly F2.4.

Samsung actually has a phone that can do that — the China-exclusive W2018 sports a variable aperture module and it looks really cool.

Why are we excited for a new iPhone? Well, 2017 was the year when we were supposed to (finally) get a new design for Apple's flagship handset. But, in a cruel plot twist, while we did get our new design, it was also locked away behind a $1000 price tag. According to reports, this phone was meant for early adopters, the Apple elites that couldn't help themselves, while the "cheaper" iPhones will get updated to the new design... in 2018.

Apparently, we'll get an iPhone 9 with an all-screen front, notch included, but a TFT display, and an iPhone 9 Plus with a larger AMOLED panel on the front. But we've got so many questions still — will the cheapest iPhone still have Face ID? What will the naming scheme be? Will there be three phones (iPhone 9, iPhone 9 Plus, and iPhone Xs) and what will the top tier have to make it different, now that all the iPhones are getting the all-screen design? And what will their names actually be?

Yeah, the questions are burning with no answers in sight.

Android 8 Oreo launched last year but is only enjoyed by a small percentage of people in the world. Of course, the infamous slow updates are the main culprit for the sluggish adoption rate.

Google sought to improve this with Project Treble — the way that core Android and manufacturer-made custom UI are stored on the phone and interact with each other. Basically, the core Android can be updated independently, without messing up every manufacturer feature, which means that phone makers will have an easier time coding and testing for major Android builds. This, in theory, should speed up updates.

Now, due to technical restraints, even some of the 2017 phones that were updated to Android 8 Oreo don't support Project Treble. So, technically, this is the year when Treble-backed smartphones will be picking up in numbers. All that remains to be seen is if this will, indeed, result in faster Android build adoption across the board. And that's something to be excited about!