Futuristic phones, drones and hubs for the home. In 2018, the tech revolution charges on.

The fourth industrial revolution – the tech revolution – will accelerate to warp speed in 2018. Thanks to huge leaps in machine learning, speech recognition, mapping and visual-recognition technology, artificial intelligence will this year walk off the pages of sci-fi books and into our lives. Self-driving car prototypes are already on our roads, but this year we will also see robot-run shops. Drones will deliver to our gardens. Amazon, Google and Apple will battle for control of our homes and offices, with their voice-operated virtual butlers. The tech giants will tempt more and more of us to ditch traditional TV and streaming services and instead use the new 5G mobile networks to live stream top sporting events wherever we are.

Elsewhere, high-tech, lightweight manufacturing and new lean-burn engines will make it possible to fly direct from Europe to Australia for the first time on Qantas’ Boeing 787 Dreamliner. For those who want to boldly go, the first civilians are likely to blast off into orbit this year. But it’s not all New Year 3.0. That most venerable manufacturer of motor cars, Rolls-Royce, will launch the toughest car in its 110-year history, its first SUV.

Here’s what to look forward to in the next 12 months.

Voice search and voice command have been around for years, but 2018 will be the year when we really get chatty with the droids. Google is racing to make its Home device a rival for market leader Amazon’s Echo. Apple will join the battle to be our little electronic helper this spring with its delayed iHub. Amazon will try to maintain its lead by moving its Echo from our homes into the office.

Qantas has the most exciting new airline product of 2018. Its Boeing 787 Dreamliner, designed for ultra-long-haul 17-plus-hour flights, will make its maiden non-stop journey from Australia to London (and back) in March. It will feature the most spacious economy cabin in the sky with only 166 seats, a large premium cabin and cavernous business cabin with Marc Newson-designed seats, which allow you to recline for take-off and landing. MR PORTER will be on the first flight – from Perth to Heathrow – and will bring you a report.

The iPhone X is a celebration of 10 years of the iPhone, which is one reason why it has such a hefty price tag. Apple has confirmed that the X lays the foundation for the next decade of the most successful consumer product of the modern world. The 2018 iPhone, which will most likely be called the iPhone 9 – to differentiate it from the special edition and stick with the current 1 to 8 cadence – is likely to include the best bits of the X, while ironing out any glitches. Apple sources say it will retain Face ID, rather than Touch ID, for security and dump the home button for good. Unlike the X, it is likely to come in two sizes, the standard and the larger Plus. If you haven’t succumbed to the X, it might be worth the wait. It’s expected in September. Appleheads should also look out for a new iPad that uses the same gesture commands as the iPhone X and the iPhone 9.

Picture the scene. It’s summer. You’re standing in your garden and you’re running low on beer. You pull out your smartphone and order a six pack to be delivered by drone. When Amazon announced drone deliveries, the idea was dismissed as science fantasy. But this year the first drone deliveries will become science fact. Amazon is already testing deliveries in Cambridgeshire (the first order successfully delivered was a bag of popcorn). In Japan, the post office will begin using drones for deliveries in rural areas. And for the really brave, Dubai city authorities are promising to introduce the first pilotless drone taxis for people.

SpaceX, a California firm backed by Tesla car boss Mr Elon Musk, is hoping to send two tourists around the moon by the end of the year. They will be the first humans to go beyond low-Earth orbit since 1972. It will be the culmination of a year of firsts in space. In autumn, Nasa’s InSight unmanned spacecraft will – if all goes well – slice into Mars’ thin atmosphere at two miles a second, open a parachute, fire retro rockets, jettison its heat shield and land. Mankind, if not a man, will have made it to the red planet. Google will announce the winner of its $30m Lunar Xprize, which will be awarded to the first firm to place a robotic lander on the moon. And, who knows? Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson might finally make it into orbit in his troubled Galactic craft.

It’s a good thing that 5G is here because we’ll be needing it. Silicon Valley has set its sights on streaming sports coverage wherever we are. Twitter, Amazon, Facebook and Snapchat are all bidding for broadcasting rights, which will push the price of rights packages even higher. Ticket prices could soon follow. Amazon has paid $50m to live stream 10 Thursday-night NFL games in the US and has struck another multi-million-dollar deal to live stream ATP tennis on Prime Video. In May, Facebook signed a deal for one live Major League Baseball game per week, in tandem with traditional broadcasters. In September, Facebook offered $600m for digital rights to cricket matches in India, but it was trumped by Star India Private’s $2.5bn bid for digital and conventional broadcast rights. Facebook is also considering a bid for Premier League matches, says Mr Dan Reed, the company’s head of global sports partnerships. In the past 25 years, the cost of broadcast rights for English Premier League soccer has surged 30-fold as deep-pocketed media companies have grown to depend on live sports to win subscribers and keep them from defecting to online rivals.

This will be the year when the humble car is overtaken by the mighty SUV. Sales of 4x4s have been growing by up to 20 per cent a year in the past decade and are set to overtake sales of saloons and coupés for the first time in the next 12 months. Every manufacturer will launch or give a glimpse of a new SUV. The most challenging will come from the two most unlikely candidates. Rolls-Royce, noted for limousines, will show off the Cullinan. It’s a fantastic name, but can an off-road vehicle really bear the Spirit of Ecstasy atop the bonnet? After Bentley launched the Bentayga, which looks more like a starter home for junior dictators than a car, no one is daring to say. Perhaps even odder, Ferrari, which always insisted it would never do an off-roader will also show off the first sketches of its 4x4, nicknamed the FUV (Ferrari Utility Vehicle). Testarossa, it ain’t. What would Mr Enzo Ferrari say?

The world’s first cashierless shop will open its doors this spring. The Amazon Go store on the corner of 7th Avenue and Blanchard Street in downtown Seattle will look like any other supermarket you might duck into to escape the rain and pick up dinner. There will be the “we prep, you cook” meal kits, jumbo jars of anything you might fancy and, this being the US, the “No Weapons” sign at the door. But there will be one thing missing. Checkouts. You will be able to walk in and out again with dinner but without paying. Sensors and cameras will monitor what you pick from the shelves and put in your basket and your Amazon account, activated via your smartphone when you enter the store, will be charged before you’ve even reached the next block.

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