Through a quirk of phonology that I won’t get into here, a ten-key phone keypad is a really great way to type Japanese, so to have that in a smartphone alongside a touchscreen that you can easily use one-handed is something special. (It has to be Nishikigoi.) I’ll keep looking and follow up with some bonus pictures when I can, because it’s really worth it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t track down a Nishikigoi model in time for this column. It’s the first phone that really made me turn my head when I first came to Japan. Fukasawa describes the design as "shaped like a square candy that has melted in your mouth and has just started to take on a roundness." It’s comfortable in the hand and makes efficient use of space, but just as importantly it’s flat-out stunning to look at. It extends the display right against the edge-to-edge keys of its processor, then smooths both halves out to sit flush with the phone’s gorgeous curved edges. The Infobar 2’s design is just astonishing. Three years after the first Infobar, KDDI and Fukasawa continued their collaboration with my personal favorite phone from the range. "Since, down the road, the phone function would become just one of the functions of this portable information device, and email, internet access, music downloads, and digital moving images would be added, it was decided that a suitable name would be Infobar - a bar for information - rather than simply a ‘phone,’" Fukasawa says.Īlthough it didn’t do much to stop the explosive proliferation of flip phones throughout Japan in the 2000s, the first Infobar was nonetheless a big hit for carrier KDDI, which to this day is known for promoting design-forward products like Marc Newson’s Talby phone and Tokujin Yoshioka’s Fx0 Firefox handset. The product’s design and naming speaks to the way that Japanese featurephones of the time pioneered much of the functionality of what we now know as smartphones. The Nishikigoi colorway became an instant classic And although it was available in a range of colorways, the red, white, and blue "Nishikigoi" scheme (named after a type of Japanese carp) you see here became an instant classic and one closely associated with the brand from then on out. The Infobar featured an extraordinary angular design where the multicolored buttons ran edge-to-edge and interlocked like a jigsaw puzzle. “Manufacturers, communications companies and consumers alike were predicting that, after an over-production of certain design styles that had lasted a number of years, the new standard for mobile phones would be the clamshell - and that there was no scope for doubt.”Īs a reaction against this homogeniety, Fukasawa created a candybar-style phone unlike any other. “I designed this mobile phone in 2000, the year in which the market for mobile phones expanded dramatically towards a situation where there would be one phone per person,” Fukasawa says in Phaidon’s excellent monograph on his work. Fukasawa conceived the first phone in the line, pictured above, as an intentional breakaway from the flip phones you probably associate with Japan in the 2000s. The Infobar line is the work of Naoto Fukasawa, one of the most famous and influential industrial designers in Japan he’s also behind the ☐ brand and several iconic Muji products like the wall-mounted CD player. But if you ask me, the distinction goes to various members of a unique and very Japanese line of phones that’s lasted well over a decade. Or the luxurious pillowy plastic of the Nokia N9. The starkly minimalist iPhone 4 would be a good shout for many. I know the question of the most beautiful phone ever made is a deeply personal one.
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