We'll soon be closing out another year, so it's time to look ahead to 2017, and see if we can't take a shot at some of the major trends in mobile in general, and Android in particular. A new round of flagship phones guarantees specs will get speccier, there'll always be expensive new toys on which to burn your cash. And people will still lose their minds over new devices from Samsung, Google, and to a lesser extent other phone makers. But what about VR, smartwatches, 4K phones, Android laptops and future Google hardware? Let's gaze into our crystal ball and see where the Android world might be heading in 2017.

1. 4K phones will become a thing — because of VR

Sure, the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium has existed for over a year — a phone which scored a notable first, but failed to do much of anything with its Ultra HD display. However 2017 will be the year 4K phones go mainstream, and the driving factor behind that will be VR. Verizon is offering the Pixel 4a for just $10/mo on new Unlimited lines That's not to say every high-end phone will be 4K. (The Samsung Galaxy S8 is variously reported to either use, or not use, a 4K screen, depending on which rumors you believe.) But the extra pixel density of 4K, while totally over-the-top for most stuff you'll do on your phone, makes a huge difference in VR. When the screen's just a few inches from your eyeballs, the difference between 500 and 800-ish pixels per inch will seem like night and day. Outside of VR mode, expect 2017's 4K phones to run downscaled at 1080p or Quad HD to save power. 2. Android will effectively become a desktop OS

Nobody can quite agree on what form it'll take, but Android on laptops and convertibles — whether it's the rumored Andromeda project, an extension of Android apps on Chrome OS, or something entirely different — will happen in 2017. How Google handles this will tell us a lot about its future direction, and the impact on Android as a whole could be significant. Some semi-informed speculation from earlier in the year: To conquer the desktop (and, let's be honest, realistically take on the iPad) Andromeda would need to decisively fix Android's built-in update problem once and for all. Nobody's going to buy a laptop that sits on an old OS version for up to a year at a time. Or one that's only guaranteed updates for two years after launch. If Android (through Andromeda) is to play with the big boys in the desktop world, there is simply no way the current Android update model can continue. Having a desktop-capable OS living in a phone also presents the possibility of a Microsoft Continuum-like feature in future Android/Andromeda phones — an exciting prospect for a number of obvious reasons. (Microsoft had that feature working pretty well on hardware far less powerful than phones will be when Andromeda is ready.) 3. Smartwatches will continue to be weird Nobody's making any money on smartwatches, nor can anyone really agree on what they're supposed to do. On one hand you have Samsung going all-out with crazy high-tech functionality most people will probably forget about or ignore in the Gear S3. On the other you have the Apple Watch basically existing as a more fashionable Fitbit. I wish I could tell you where Android Wear is supposed to fit in among that ill-defined mess; with just one developer preview to go before it's final, Google is still making major design changes to the still unreleased Wear 2.0.

We still don't know where Android Wear will fit in the unprofitable mess that is the smartwatch market.