At the start of each year, thousands upon thousands of people eagerly flock to Las Vegas, with the sole purpose of attending CES – Consumer Electronic Show- the largest marketplace and showcase for consumer electronics and technology hardware, content and technology delivery systems in the world.

CES 2019 was no different, showcasing over 4,500 companies including developers, manufacturers and suppliers. From iconic brands and tech giants to small start-ups and innovators that are set to disrupt the status quo- CES is the world’s gathering place for anything tech.

While you might expect the world’s largest showcase for electronic consumer goods to be the perfect place for smartphone manufacturers to introduce their devices to the market, the Mobile World Congress (MWC) hosted every February in Barcelona, Spain nabs the title as the world’s largest annual event for the mobile industry.

We can expect a number of noteworthy announcements to be made at MWC next month, however CES 2019 has delivered a number of great smartphone showcases to bide us over until then.

Here are a few smartphone highlights from CES 2019:

1. Royole FlexPai

Showcased at the Royole booth at CES 2019 was the world’s first real foldable phone- the FlexPai. This foldable smartphone is powered by the Snapdragon 855 processor and features a 20-megapixel telephoto lens, as well as a 16-megapixel wide-angle lens that can be used in for both selfie and normal photo mode.

Its foldable display is 7.8 inches when opened and approximately 5 inches when closed. A foldable smartphone might be a hard concept to wrap your head around at first but Royole assures consumers that the FlexPai still works even after 200,000 bends. One aspect that might put potential buyers off is the cheapness of the plastic OLED display, as well as the device’s thickness.

2. Samsung 5G Prototype

While many attendees were waiting with baited breathe in hopes that the South Korean tech giant would showcase their eagerly anticipated Galaxy 10, they had to be satisfied with a prototype of the 5G device instead.

The prototype, which is Samsung’s first 5G smartphone, was on display at CES, stoking rumours that the announcement of its release could be expected during the first half of this year. The 5G phone is slated to offer a download speed of 10Gbps (gigabits per second) – that’s a staggering 100 times faster than current 4G. To put 5G’s speed in perspective for you, it is fast enough to download a 4K resolution video in a matter of second.

3. Hisense U30

CES 2019 saw an interesting newcomer in the mid-range smartphone category with HiSense’s U30. This $5 billion Chinese brand might be more familiar to consumers for their consumer electronics and appliances that it sells under various different brands such as Sharp, Toshba and Hitachi.

Nevertheless, it made a notable appearance at CES this year with its excellent mid-range smartphone offering. The U30 boasts a 6.3 inch LCD display perfect for Australian sports betting, with a punch-hole in it for its 20 megapixel selfie camera.

It features rear dual-cameras made by Samsung and is powered by the newest mid-range Qualcomm processor, the Snapdragon 675 and Android 9.