The Compelling Curiosity of Japanese Smartphones

In a world of global smartphone aspirations, Japan’s phone makers have gone another route and their phones are more unique because of it

In the smartphone world, there is a push toward globalization. A need to make products that have mass appeal not only in a company’s home market but abroad as well, to maximize potential revenue and success. We have seen this come at the cost of the identity of the product at times, resulting in slightly different approaches to accommodate these new markets. OnePlus for instance, to cater to Indian customers started manufacturing phones in the country due to a “Make in India” push by the Indian government to encourage manufacturing in the country.

But at a certain point, all this globalization has led to a smartphone landscape filled with companies that are more or less making the same phone. That sense of regional identity that was felt when a company like Nokia made a phone that screamed Nordic influence seems to have gone by the wayside. Gone but not extinct, however. In Japan, the giants of consumer electronics are not the global juggernauts that they once were but are producing phones that seem to deviate from the norm and are an obvious reflection of the country in which they are sold. Much like Japanese culture itself, these brands have become more exclusive and closed off to the rest of the world.

A Product of Origin

The phones that are made by Japan’s tech companies will likely be unfamiliar to most. There are household names like Sony and Sharp that aren’t associated with smartphones, a smartphone branded by camera enthusiast brand Leica, and even a phone made by a local appliance manufacturer named Balmuda. The phones from these phone makers all have a purpose and are rooted in the minimalism and clean lines that are pillars of Japanese design.

With phones like the Leica Leitz Phone 2 and Sharp Aquos R7, we see phones with centered camera housings symmetrically circular as opposed to more complicated designs that we see from Chinese phone manufacturers like Xiaomi. Sony’s Xperia phones offer a plank-like design that…