Kyocera Infobar A03

From the Novus Vault: Kyocera Infobar A03

For nearly two decades, Novus Labs has been building one of the world's most extensive interoperability libraries, collecting unforgettable devices along the way. This week we open the Device Vault to revisit the Kyocera Infobar A03 — a striking fusion of smartphone technology and industrial design, created in collaboration with renowned designer Naoto Fukasawa.

With its bold color palettes, minimalist interface, and uniquely tactile aesthetic, the Infobar A03 blurred the line between consumer electronics and modern art — proving smartphones could be expressive, playful, and unmistakably original. Released February 21, 2015 for the Japanese market, it carried the celebrated INFOBAR design lineage (iida/au) onto flagship-class hardware, pairing a compact, design-led body with the performance of its era.

Highlights

• Colorful "INFOBAR" industrial-design lineage (iida/au) with distinctive, design-led styling
• Flagship-class Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chipset in a compact body
• Water and dust resistance, common in Japanese domestic models

Key Specifications

• 4.5-inch TFT display (1080 × 1920)
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 (MSM8974AB v3) chipset
• Android 4.4 (KitKat)
• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac with hotspot, Bluetooth 4.0
• 131 × 68 × 8.9 mm, 130 g
• Released February 21, 2015 (Japan)

Significance

The Infobar A03 showed that a smartphone could be an object of genuine industrial-design desire. By extending Naoto Fukasawa's celebrated INFOBAR aesthetic onto modern flagship hardware, it reminded the industry that form and personality could be as memorable as a spec sheet — a philosophy that still resonates in today's design-driven devices.