You might recall last month’s announcement by specialist camera maker RED revealing the existence of the RED Hydrogen One smartphone. The news wasn’t expected and was made all the stranger by one of the features supposedly coming to the $1,200 handset — a so-called holographic display.
Well, we still haven’t seen how that works but RED have been taking the Hydrogen One for a walk every so often and one of the places it has turned up is the internet, because everything winds up there eventually. The result is that we can take a look at three different prototypes of the phone, showing the normal design, the holographic display (sorta), and then a modular version of the handset, thanks to YouTuber MKBHD.
In the video above we can see the Hydrogen One from all angles, with a dive into the construction materials (Kevlar and friends) and the oddly grippy sides of the phone. From the construction we move onto the holographic display, which we can’t actually see in action. We have to be content with a blurred image, a facial reaction, and a description which sounds like it could apply to the screen of Nintendo’s 3DS — though we suspect that RED has taken a far more technological route for their holographic display.
Finally, we get a look at a chunky camera module for the Hydrogen One which makes the smartphone look like a radically industrial point-and-shoot — a look that we’re totally okay with. This is supposedly the start of a modular camera system from RED, something else that we would be happy to explore.
Still, the RED Hydrogen One is a mystery for now, even with this reveal. We’re looking forward to actually seeing the holographic display, rather than just seeing a reaction to it. But since the phone will start at around R16,000 (likely a lot more, given America’s tendency to leave the tax off), it’ll have to be something special to convince us to get on board.
Source: Marques Brownlee (YouTube) via The Next Web