In an era in which predominated the cellular type clam (in the Decade of 2000), the Japanese Naoto Fukusawa, one of the most influential in the Japanese land industrial designers, resisted the boom and quite innovative created a cell phone with a design: shape of candy bar with buttons that seemed taken from a mosaic made with glass and a range of colours inspired by a characteristic of Japan fish , the Koi (Nishikigoi). It’s the Infobar (via The Verge).
His name explained it the same designer in a monograph of his work: “as the function of the phone will become just one of the functions of this device of portable information and e-mail, access to internet, downloads of music and digital images that move will be added, it was decided that an appropriate name would be Infobar “: a bar for information, more than just a phone”.
Later, with the Japanese operator KDDI again, created the Infobar 2, which follows the same line of the above but now with round edges and buttons that do not protrude, as is the curious description of Fukasawa: “shaped like a square caramel that has melted in your mouth, and began to acquire roundness”.
Already in 2011, Fukusawa designed the A01 that integrated Android. This was similar to the trend of the time: only three buttons and a huge screen. However, despite maintaining the style and colors of the buttons, he had nothing to make it stand out from the rest. Two years later, HTC manufactured A02 but this hopefully rescued Classic at the edge colors, because it even already included physical buttons. Last year they launched the A03 and as you can see rescued, at least, the range of colors.
Independent of modernity and trend in which fell the Infobar line in recent years, there was one that achieved the perfect mix between a smartphone with a 3.2-inch touchscreen and a classic 12-key keypad, even rescuing the old Infobar 1 Nishikigoi-themed style: C01 launched in 2012.
Unfortunately, it supports up to Android 2.3 only and even allows to access the Play Store, so it has become completely obsolete. No doubt in Japan some must follow it using but forgetting the pile of applications available.
Today many users prefer smaller phones. Sometimes it is much more useful something compact – that you can manipulate (and write) with only one hand – to a huge smartphone of 5.5 inches you sliding all the time. Would not be bad that companies rescued the older models and designing terminals with a more retro, isn’t it?
