6. Flexible displays
One of the most consistent tech rumours over the last few years has been the coming of flexible displays. It's unlikely a flexible screen would lead to a bendy phone you could fold up, as a bendy phone would require bendy batteries, a bendy processor and bendy circuit boards, but if a more flexible screen would help a phone survive a drop on to the kitchen laminate, that'd be a feature worth paying an extra £1.50p a month for over a two year contract.
7. Tougher than ever
With pretty much all smartphones now offering great levels of power and performance no matter what price point they're pitched at, we should start to see makers differentiate their models more based on hardware sex appeal. HTC started this trend in 2012 with its gforgeous and innovative HTC One X and HTC One S, which combined power and the latest software with a physical design that helped the phones stand out from the crowd.
8. Bigger batteries
2012 finally saw phone makers give us what we wanted, with several models like the Razr Maxx featuring bigger batteries that enabled them to stay alive significantly longer. Hopefully shipping something with a 1,500mAh battery will soon become a crime, with quite a few of the Android hardware makers backing up their ever-growing displays with bigger, longer lasting batteries, as Samsung did with the 2,100mAh unit inside its Galaxy S3. We'd happily trade a couple of millimetres and gain 20 grams of weight for a phone that won't leave us bored and disconnected by 4:30pm.
9. Budget models to dominate
Gone are the days when the sub-£100 category got a you barely usable piece of rubbish. Today's budget models along the lines of the Huawei G300 offer great power and the very latest operating systems, with the trend set to continue in 2013. Huawei's Ascend G330 brings dual-core power to the bargain bucket, while Chinese rival ZTE is set to be preparing a 5" monster to challenge Samsung's premium Galaxy Note range. 2013 will be the year you pay less and get more. In the phone world, at least.
10. A Blackberry blip
RIM's set to launch its BB10 models in 2013. While any new BB is unlikely to challenge iPhone or the high-end Android models when it comes to capturing the hearts and minds of modern smartphone users, the latest Blackberry phones and hardware are bound to capture a few dihard RIM fans. What we've seen of BB10 so far isn't groundbreaking, but clever touches like RIM's software keyboard ought to counteract the doom-mongers who claim BB10 will be dead on arrival. We give it at least three or four months.
