It was by mere coincidence that yesterday I wrote about iida because that night I found myself transfixed by one of the more exciting product launches of the year. And it was being made by iida. The announcement was concerning the release of INFOBAR A01, a new android smartphone re-imagined by its original designer and one of Japan’s forerunners of industrial design, Naoto Fukasawa.
It also comes equipped with a brand-spanking-new interface designed by one of Japan’s forerunners of UI design Yugo Nakamura. It was after watching the below video that I was prompted to ask the bold question, “Did Japan just take back the smartphone from Apple?”
In less than 24 hours the new INFOBAR has already gotten a thumbs up from designers across the globe including Khoi Vinh and Niklas Lindstrom from New York, and Paul Baron and Akihiro Kumagaya from Japan.
Here is a short history of how INFOBAR has evolved:
2001.5 info.bar (concept)
2003.10 INFOBAR
2007.9 INFOBAR 2
2011.5 INFOBAR A01
May 17, 2011 at 7:32 pm
Haha my husband has always been an infobar man. Maybe this means he will finally get a smartphone 🙂
May 18, 2011 at 11:26 am
@Claire – Nice! Yea, I remember seeing the very first version and thinking it was the damn-finest-looking phone I had ever seen.
May 27, 2011 at 6:18 am
He says he’s not going to get it because it doesn’t look enough like a bar! It’s shaped like every other smartphone out there. Would be neat to see a smartphone with a screen that is long and thin like previous incarnations of the Infobar.