Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “RED Hydrogen One Smartphone: Explained!”.
Hey what is up guys, i’m kbhd here and right about at the end of last week we got a completely random announcement out of the blue for the red hydrogen one, a 1200 holographic android phone, and so when it happened, i gave my initial thoughts on twitter. I kind of talked through it a little bit and then i’ve been quiet since then, but people have been asking me about it about what i really think about it non-stop for the past couple days. So this is all of that. So what happened was red. Yes, this red the red who makes the cameras that i shoot these videos on uh. First, they made this hype announcement on the red user forums. They do this every once in a while, but they were like all right new product coming new product category. Get your credit cards ready, it’s gon na be lit. So, of course, in the couple days up to that people got really excited and speculating about what it might be.
Is it a mirrorless camera? Are they making a stills camera? Are they getting into audio? What could red be doing next and then, of course, the day and the time dropped and red hydrogen one was unveiled. So it’s the world’s first holographic media machine in your pocket. It’S a standalone full-featured unlocked multi-band smartphone operating on android os. That just happens to add a few additional features that shatter the mold of conventional thinking and then this picture this was the only photo released of the phone and then there’s an order.
Page 1200 bucks for the aluminum one 1600 bucks for titanium. So uh, that’s that’s kind of weird, so red the company, that’s making these cameras, and these super high-end sensors is stepping into the world of smartphones where there’s these huge players already samsung’s and apples and these massive supply chains. How is red going to step in this is kind of like my two worlds colliding right now.
I guess, if there’s any target user target demographic for someone, who’s gon na buy a smartphone from red. It’S probably me so yeah i bought both. But, to be honest, there’s not a whole lot actually known about the smartphone, like i said, there’s only this one image of it and it’s kind of dark, and you basically just have the order page and this one pdf of a lot of jargon to decode multi-dimensional Uh 2d 3d vr ar mr. What is a lot? What does this even mean? Well, that’s what i’m here to try to decode for you and also for myself, because i ordered them so basically, this is how i see it going. Let me first of all, let me brighten that photo up a little bit for you.
It’S uh, it’s an interesting looking phone and up front. They said it’s going to have a 5.7 inch professional hydrogen holographic display. So this is the biggest question mark of them all, because we don’t really know what that is exactly. But i kind of got the visual of like a really advanced 3d experience and it will be glasses free as well and assuming it’s nothing that we’ve never seen before, which i guess i can’t really assume with red but remember the amazon fire phone back in 2014.
Yeah kind of something along those lines, but obviously, four years later and four years, better basically red is claiming you’ll, be able to really look around and experience real depth with this display and of course, then we’ll have some games and apps to support it as well. Not really sure, if they’re using the word holographic correctly in this case, but we’ll see and you’ll also be able to create and capture and share these dot h4v files, which are again, are going to be brand new, but that should be optimized for this experience. They’Re really trying to push beyond normal 3d and then just looking at the phone itself that brightened image. We have usbc on the bottom, a headphone, jack, nice and then the camera up top and a pretty interesting.
Looking back almost looks like a heat sink like this phone is definitely going to be thick and then some grippy sides, maybe also with a little micro sd card slot door, because the phone does have that card slot and they’re also advertising this next level, multi-dimensional audio To go along with the multi-dimensional video and, of course, we can’t see any of the speakers on the back of the phone, which leads me to believe that they’ll be up at the front kind of like boom sound, which i’m hoping it lives up to. And if you read the way they describe this audio on red’s page, it seems like it should live up to that then at the bottom of the back of the phone. You have these pins and they look a lot like what you see on the back of the moto z and z2. This alludes to the modularity aspect, so reds cameras, as you already know, are already super modular via pins for the most part. So you have all these attachable modules. You can build a camera up from the base to be exactly how much or how little you want it. Based on your shooting scenario, it’s honestly an awesome system and i’m a big fan of it. But it’s also a pretty expensive one, because red makes all of those accessories and they get to control exactly how much it costs, because who else is going to make red accessories.
So this hydrogen one phone is planning on using those pins on the back of the phone to become its own expanding modular system, with some accessories that i assume we haven’t seen at all yet because it’d have to be the size of a smartphone. But, according to all the patents, if you read through the patent application, i’ll link it below the like button, if you want to check it out and read it, it looks like they want you to be able to build this up to be a full-on cine camera. So you can see the diagram kind of how it looks attached to things looks like a full blown lens mount on the back of this one. A sensor mount and the patent also shows roughly what the front of the phone could look like so home button.
In the middle front-facing speakers at least down at the bottom, so that’s good, but then from the side. The additional modules with hdmi and more ports and more pins looks really interesting and you can see in this one. The phone is all the way up at the front and then the modules attach via these pins on the back and they just kind of make it thicker, while adding functionality and connectivity, possibly a much bigger and better sensor for video and photos. So we haven’t actually seen any of these accessories in photos yet, but we do know number one they’ll be made specifically for this camera by red and number two they’ll also probably be very expensive, so bottom line. It looks like this isn’t going to be the smartphone for the average consumer.
Obviously, you know that from the 1200 or 1600 price, but also the fact that most people aren’t building up a smartphone to be nearly as thick as like a small mirrorless camera that don’t have goals that are very different from a normal person plus toss in the Completely insane sounding hydrogen holographic display, i mean it sounds like a lot, but all that makes it a very unusual aspect. So how do i feel about it? Uh, honestly, i’m optimistic, i i think red knows what they’re doing obviously they’re incredible with image sensors and that tech and smartphones is something that i’m just kind of generally interested in, but honestly, there’s so much good red stuff out there that i’m also a little bit Terrified there’s not that many companies that i would consider myself a serious fan of like i’m. Some of you may argue that, but i think tesla’s, probably one of those and red i like pretty much everything red has ever made that i’ve ever used.
So if this phone isn’t amazing in some way like every other red product, i’ve used i’ll be super disappointed. But it’s obviously, as we’ve seen in the past, really hard to be new in a smartphone game right now and make any sort of dent or impact even a company like red, which is a huge multi-million dollar company, has zero skin in the game. Right now and that’s a big deal, but i’m hoping this is the first of many successful projects that they dive into in this smaller modular game.
So good luck, red, i hope it’s not just a kickstarter and a money grab. I hope it’s a good developing product and project that we’ll see in the future, but that’s just me. Let me know what you guys think. Would you be interested in getting this 1200 android holographic smartphone? Let me know what you think, thanks for watching i’ll talk to you guys in the next one peace you .