Snapdragon Tech Summit 2018 - Qualcomm has just kicked off its annual Snapdragon Tech Summit here in Maui, Hawaii with the big announcement of its new Snapdragon 855 flagship processor.

The new Snapdragon 855 succeeds the Snapdragon 845 which was announced this time last year at the Snapdragon Tech Summit 2017, but the new chip isn't just faster, it packs 5G connectivity. Qualcomm flew in both AT&T and Verizon to chat with the press and analysts here on location, and to have some demos that show off more real-world results from 5G.

Qualcomm has been light on details for the Snapdragon 855 but we do know that the company is making the new chip on the 7nm node, with previous-gen Snapdragon 845 being made on 10nm. We should expect improved power efficiency and performance, with more details on that arriving in the coming days at the Snapdragon Tech Summit.

2019 will be the year of 5G taking over, with Qualcomm set to be the leader in 5G communications technology with its first Snapdragon X50 modem, something that will be going inside of the recently announced 5G hotspot by Sprint and HTC.

The two companies aren't saying much about the upcoming 5G hotspot other than it will be providing 1Gbps-class data speeds as well as normal 4G LTE connectivity, to multiple smartphones and other wireless-capable devices in (or out of) the house. Sprint is making the move with the 5G hotspot so that you can have super-fast speed to your devices through Wi-Fi before 5G is built into more and more phones in 2019 and beyond.

Sprint will have its 5G network up and running in multiple US cities in the first half of 2019, with just 9 cities confirmed so far. Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, New York City, Phoenix and Washington, D.C. are all confirmed so far. Sprint Chief Technology Officer Dr. John Saw said: "We're excited to continue building our 5G device portfolio and announce another way our customers can be among the first to experience Sprint 5G next year. This innovative product will allow customers on the go, at work or at home to enjoy Sprint 5G on multiple devices with incredibly fast connectivity for content sharing, mobile gaming, entertainment and so much more".

Just as you thought having two, three, or four cameras on the back of a smartphone was getting out of control, LG has filed a patent that could see a future smartphone rocking a huge 16 cameras on the back.

LetsGoDigital first saw the collection of cameras on LG's new patents, with 16 cameras each featuring different curvatures, and when snapping photos they will collect images from different angles. After this, the phone would reportedly be capable of making a moving image captured through multiple lenses. Better yet, the 16-camera rig on the back is joined by a small mirror that would allow for the ultimate selfies.

LG's new patent also teases that new effects on photos can be achieved with the army of rear-facing snappers, where you could replace an object in a photo very easily. You could take out part of a photo and replace it with another image that was captured from a separate lens. LG's patent shows the head of a teddy bear being rotated easily with a swipe on the screen, with the patent also showing us that you can replace faces and capture 3D images. It seems the camera is the heart and soul of this purported phone, in more ways than one.

Samsung is getting closer and closer to the release of its first flexible smartphone, recently unveiling the Infinity Flex display technology that will go onto the Galaxy Flex, Samsung Flex, or whatever the flex Samsung calls it. But.. how much will it cost?

We've previously reported that the Galaxy F/Galaxy Flex would be priced at up to $1700, but new rumors from a Samsung insider suggest the biggest change in smartphones in over a decade could cost as much, if not over $2000. Gizmodo UK has spoken to someone that says Samsung's new flexible handset will be "mega-expensive" and anywhere between $2000-$2565.

We should expect multiple flexible handsets unveiled from Samsung, with the flagship model possibly costing up to $2565 is... well... pretty insane. The Samsung insider added that "the foldable device will launch by the first half of 2019 in select markets" and that it's "currently ready for its mass production and expecting at least 1 million units to be produced".

Samsung will be launching its next-gen flagship smartphone early next year, with the latest rumors on the Galaxy S10 seeing it rock a huge 6.7-inch display, not one or two but six cameras, and 5G connectivity.

It wouldn't be a huge launch with a single new smartphone in the Galaxy S10 range which is known internally as "Beyond X" according to The Wall Street Journal. There is reportedly the Beyond 0, Beyond 1, and Beyond 2 that will have anywhere between three and five cameras each. The Beyond X variant is the beast with six cameras, and I'm sure 5G connectivity will be limited to the flagship model.

Remember that Samsung will be launching its next-gen foldable smartphone close to the release of the Galaxy S10, and then we'll have a few months before the company launches the Galaxy Note 10.

Samsung is slowly providing the pieces to its 2019 smartphone plans together, with a tease of its new InfinityFlex display that will be the centerpiece of its first foldable smartphone in the Galaxy F. But now... the company has just announced an even more important part of its 2019 plans: Exynos 9820.

The new Exynos 9820 is Samsung's latest processor which is being made on the 8nm node, and features a dedicated neural processing unit, or NPU. This means the Galaxy S10 will be filled with a bunch of AI abilities, but a bigger point here is the camera support in the new Exynos 9820. Samsung is taking things to a new level offering 4K 150FPS video with 10-bit color, or 8K at 30FPS. Samsung is claiming that the NPU will have 7x the performance in AI tasks, with things like real-time scene detection and more.

Exynos 8920 will have up to 20% higher single-core performance, while power efficiency hits up to 40% higher, while multi-core performance is up to 15% faster compared against the Exynos 9810. Samsung is teasing up to 40% higher GPU performance with the new Mali-G76 against the previous-gen Mali-G72. The GPU also packs 35% improvement in power efficiency.

Samsung has already started teasing the most important part of its future smartphone, with the company unveiling its new InfinityFlex display that will be used in future foldable smartphones like the purported Galaxy F.

The latest news on the Galaxy F smartphone is from South Korean news outlet Yonhap News Agency, where they are reporting that Samsung will unveil its new Galaxy F foldable smartphone in March 2019. It's expected that the Galaxy S10 will be unveiled beforehand, with the biggest change in Samsung's next-gen Galaxy S10 flagship smartphone is the inclusion of 5G.

Yonhap is reporting that Samsung could price the new Galaxy F foldable smartphone at a whopping $1770, which puts it out of the hands of most people but it will be one of the biggest changes in the world of smartphones in years. It'll be an experiment at first for Samsung, just like the Galaxy Note was all those years ago, and it ended up disrupting the entire smartphone market.

We all knew it was coming but the day is still not quite here: Samsung hasn't revealed its foldable smartphone but rather the most important part of the device instead, the Infinity Flex foldable display.

Samsung's new Infinity Flex display is a large 7.3-inch panel that sports an external "cover" display that is smaller and more like a traditional smartphone display, with the company touting the larger display can be folded "hundreds of thousands" of times before it begins degrading.

The company is using a flexible OLED panel with no glass on top, with Samsung replacing traditional glass with a flexible "advanced composite polymer". Not only that, but there's also a 45% thinner polarizer, with Samsung aiming for mass production of the Infinity Flex display in the next few months.

Qualcomm is ready to burst out of the gate with 5G early next year, where we should see Samsung being one of the first smartphone manufacturers in the world tapping the next generation of communication technology.

But what about Apple? The most revolutionary, forward-thinking company on the planet? Yeah, they won't have 5G inside of the iPhone until 2020 according to "a source with knowledge of Apple's plans" according to Fast Company.

Apple is reportedly going to use Intel's 8161 5G modem inside of the 2020 iPhone, where Intel will hopefully be tapping their 10nm node to get the 5G modem made. Intel will reportedly be the sole provider of iPhone modems, and has been working on the 8060 for testing and prototyping of the next-gen 5G iPhone.

Can you feel it? That's the sound of the world's first foldable smartphone right around the corner.

Samsung is now officially teasing its upcoming developer conference as "the crossroads between the present and the future". The company tweeted out a video that says "Where Now Meets Next" for the upcoming developer conference in San Francisco on November 7-8.

We already know Samsung has its foldable smartphone around the corner, with company CEO DJ Koh saying last month that the foldable smartphone could be unveiled this year. There have been no concrete leaks apart from the purported Galaxy F name, but if there was a time and place to do it... November 7-8 seems like the go-er.

I don't think we'll see a fully ready to go product, but more of a "this is what is ABOUT to drop" and then a full unveiling and pre-orders going live at CES 2018 which is right around the corner in early-January 2019. We might see some of the updated interfaces that Samsung will use on a dual-screen foldable smartphone, which is going to be one of the more interesting parts of the entire unveiling.