You can tell ...

Andrew Hoyle/CNET

One can tell when a market is mature, it's when the notion of innovation no longer applies because the products in a specific market differentiate from one another on superficialities, something readily seen in smartphones as the tech has gotten so good and so similar, the notions of products in a mature market such as smart phones having unique selling points becomes meaningless.

To whit ...

Let's face it, mobile phones, even the best ones, just aren't that exciting anymore. They're all way more powerful than we really need, they all have nifty multi-lens cameras and they all look essentially the same. I really hoped that folding phones would give a much needed shot of adrenaline to the industry, but well over a year on from their arrival, they've fizzled out like a damp firework and left me feeling disappointed.

I've worked for CNET for a decade and most of that time I've specifically covered mobile phones. I've seen a lot come and go. I've seen the rise and fall of BlackBerry, I've seen weird phone ideas like the Russian Yotaphone with its e-ink second screen and I saw the brief trend of curved phones like the LG G4 and Samsung's Galaxy Round. But in recent years it's seemed that genuine innovation has been put aside, with every company clamoring to make what could easily be revisions of the same product. 

The Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X are both essentially tablets that fold into phones.

Andrew Hoyle/CNET

Exactly