HAPPY NEW YEAR! Here it is! My first post of 2019! When thinking about this upcoming year in tech there are a number of trends and stories that will dominate the year. But instead of really focusing on the major overall trends that most others will, I’d like to focus on the ones that I’m most excited about. What are those things that I hope at the end of 2019 will have come true? What’s my tech wish list of 2019?

The Truly Bezel-less (Chinless?) Android Phone

It’s probably the quest that most manufacturers are working on and yet as far as we have seen there is one thing that all “bezel-less” Android phones still have: a chin. Now you may be thinking, “but the chins are so small now, why does it matter?” Yet it is this quest for full screen displays that is why I keep coming back to the chin. As of today, there is only one phone that has absolutely no chin and whose display reaches the very bottom of the phone: the iPhone X (and all future versions included). It’s a very subtle thing, but when you use an iPhone and its touch gestures there is a reason why they work so perfectly. When you swipe up to go home on the iPhone your finger is literally starting at the edge of the bottom of the device. You do not need to swipe on any part of the front glass to get there. It just works, and makes using gestures more intuitive and deliberate. As most Android phones are starting to implement gesture based navigation on their phones, isn’t in time that we have a phone release that finally fulfills this “chinless” display arrangement as seen on the iPhone? There has been so much in recent months about notches, tear-drop, and now even the punch-hole cut outs for solving bezels on the top of the phone. Why are Android OEMs stopping there? I really hope that by the end of this year we see at least one flagship Android phone (yes even one from Samsung) succeed at wrapping the display under the components as Apple has done, so that we can finally utilize gesture based UI the way it was meant to be.

More Stock, Less Bloat

I think it’s safe to say that I will probably always prefer a more stock-like Android interface over a skin. It’s not to say I don’t like skins. Using MIUI 10 has been a real hate-to-love transformation for me. When I first re-started my channel I did my first “Mi 8 - 48 Hour Review” and got a bunch of angry comments saying “why are you reviewing a phone with a custom launcher? We want to see MIUI 9!!” It was so crazy for me to see this because my natural tendency for years when purchasing a Xiaomi phone was as follows: one, unlock developer mode and speed up animations to 0.5x. Two, download Nova, Action or Google Now (and later Rootless Pixel) launcher on phone and get rid of “Insert OEM skin here” immediately. Yet the more Xiaomi phones I used the more I started to enjoy the additions and features of MIUI. You really can get used to a new interface and UI over time, and that’s exactly what happened with me and my Xiaomi phones. By the release of MIUI 10 I was never switching launchers anymore, and just used the phones as they came out of the box.

Yet for every 5 or 6 Xiaomi phones I used, there was always the occasional phone with Android One that made me miss the simplicity and fluidity that stock Android offers. Is stock Android a bit plain? A bit boring? Perhaps. But there is one aspect of Stock Android (Android One and Pixel Launcher being the most recent examples) that I feel is still a far more enjoyable experience out of the box: absolutely no bloat. But what about on everything else? Bloat. And not a little bloat, LOTS of Bloat. My initial experience with any EMUI, MIUI, Funtouch OS, or Color OS based phone always involves removing tons of bloatware apps. Add to that the addition of ads in various parts of of the OS (like the Huawei Gallery app) and annoying popups recommending I re-download all the apps I just deleted, and the experience is just never as clean and fluid, never as satisfying and always more frustrating. The closest thing in the Western world that mimics this is using an Amazon Fire Tablet. Ads will appear on the lock screen, meanwhile apps, magazines and products are recommended for purchase on every tab of the home-screen interface. Yet you kind of know what you’re getting with Amazon and its Fire OS. As one of the largest online stores in the world its kind of par for the course. Is this the experience that I really want to have every time I purchase a new China OEM based Android phone? Not at all! And so that is why I wish that by the end of 2019 we see more China based companies begin to offer Android One phones to their consumers. Imagine this: An Android One based Huawei Mate 20X: no bloatware, just fluid stock Android UI with no compromises. For me that is the phone that dreams are made of.

The Flagship Killer, Killer, KILLER!

2018 was a special year in the sense that we saw a phone released that truly disrupted the market. Not since the One Plus One had a phone offered so much for so little, and truly defined the term “flagship killer” as this phone did. If you follow my channel you know already what phone I am talking about. The Pocophone F1 redefined our perceptions of what a budget flagship could be. With a Snapdragon 845, 4000 mAh battery, solid 6.18” IPS LCD display and camera that wasn’t actually garbage (in fact it was very good) we opened our hearts and our wallets to Xiaomi’s new sub-brand device. Entering 2019 the Pocophone F1 is still the phone I will recommend to most people who want the best phone for the best price. Nothing has or will top it for some time to come. And yet therein lies my ultimate wish for 2019: what if someone did? My major wish for 2019 is that companies explore and strike the perfect balance of price to design, display, performance, audio and camera quality to give the Pocophone F1 a run for it’s money. Imagine this review in late 2019: the Pocophone F2 vs a competitor with a Snapdragon 855 (or Kirin 980), 8 GB of RAM and a 6.5” bezel-less display, 4000 mAh battery with USB-C and a 100 DXO Mark score camera. All for 300-350 USD. The Pocophone F2 is the phone we are all waiting for. But my wish is that I am able to review it next to a phone that comes close or even surpasses it in overall value.

Where will we be in December 2019? We shall see!

The beauty of the mobile technology landscape today is that as predictable and revealing as leaks can be, there are just as many opportunities for true surprise and wonder. Here’s to an exciting year of mobile technology that I cannot wait to experience as a consumer, industry observer and as Frankie Tech. 2019 HERE WE COME!