And then there's video.
Combined with 5G, foldable smartphones will prove their worth when you can watch a crisp, sharp 4K resolution video on a tablet-sized screen when you're out and about, away from a WiFi connection.
"Consuming high-quality video is going to be as easy as [streaming] music," Amon said.
The importance of streaming video on our smartphones can't be downplayed — it's something that more and more of us are doing on our smartphones every year. If it's not important to you, it was important to almost 170 million people around you in 2018 in the US alone, according to data from Statista.
But for many people, the most noticeable benefit of 5G-enabled foldable phones will come in the form of connecting with friends and family.
With 5G and foldable smartphones, Amon is projecting a time when we're connecting with friends and family in instant, high-resolution everywhere, not just in our homes, on our WiFi networks.
"Things that existed but have never been successful, such as video chatting, are going to be awesome because it's 4K [with] instant response [and] no lag ... it's like virtual presence," Amon said. "Every person in the world will be a broadcaster with a 4K camera in their hand."
I'd actually argue that video chatting is successful today — I've been doing it for some time with few issues. But then again, I haven't tried lag-free 4K resolution video chatting on 5G. Based on what Amon was telling me, it's going to be a lot better on 5G than it is today, and we'll look back at the 4G LTE days and wonder how we ever managed with choppy, laggy, pixelated video-chatting.
When it comes to social media, the experience shouldn't be that much different than if you were connected to a fast and responsive WiFi network. But 5G, and the promises the industry is making about 5G, means we can bring that experience wherever we are, not just with a WiFi connection.
So think about all of that, and then consider it on a screen that's two or three times the size of your phone screen now yet still pocketable. It's pretty simple: 5G on a foldable phone will make the social media experience better.