The professional-camera company RED made waves last month when it announced plans to launch its first smartphone, the Hydrogen One.

The company hasn’t divulged many details about the device, but it has hyped up some of the phone’s higher-level features: a “modular” accessory system that will support higher-quality camera tools and a “holographic” display that’s said to be capable of presenting images with a 3D-like effect.

All of that comes in a phone whose preorders start at $1,195.

Up to now, RED has released only one obscured teaser image of the device. But the company recently gave the popular YouTube tech reviewer Marques Brownlee, also known as MKBHD, a nonfunctional prototype of what it says the Hydrogen One will ultimately look like.

This is the RED Hydrogen One. Right away, you can see its design is much busier than those of most other smartphones. The back has a mix of metal and Kevlar, with a big dual-lens camera, four screws in the corners, a big, ruby-like logo, and modular accessory pins at the bottom.

RED says the base version of the Hydrogen One will use aluminum and a pricier model will be made of titanium.
The sides of the phone, meanwhile, are grooved to fit your fingers. On one side, there’s a power button that doubles as a fingerprint scanner, and a dedicated button for video recording.

On the other, there are separated volume buttons.

At the bottom, there’s a USB-C port and a headphone jack.

The front of the phone looks pretty standard, with a handful of speaker grilles dotted around a 5.7-inch display. Don’t expect the slim bezels of a Samsung Galaxy S8 here.

It’s also unclear what resolution the display will have, but for $1,200, it’d be a shock if it weren’t sharp.

Altogether, the Hydrogen One is a pretty large rectangle. As Brownlee shows, it’s a bit taller and wider than an iPhone 7 Plus and a OnePlus 5. It’s a good bit thicker, too.

Brownlee said that RED walked him through an early demo of the Hydrogen One’s “holographic” display tech, but that he wasn’t able to show it on camera. It’s still hard to say whether or not it’s the real deal — Brownlee suggested it was a tad rough around the edges — and how much video content will actually use it.

Note that the “holographic” tech itself is optional — if you just want to use the Hydrogen One normally, you can. But you’ll probably want the display tricks to work well if you’re dropping $1,200 on the phone.

Brownlee also tested a potential modular camera accessory. The idea here is to snap on lenses and sensors that would make the Hydrogen One’s image quality competitive with higher-end mirrorless and other small form-factor shooters, and possibly even work as part of a larger professional-style rig.

The accessory was also non-functional, so, again, it’s way too soon to say how well all of this might work. But, unsurprisingly, it looks like it would make the phone pretty thick.

There’s still plenty to learn about the Hydrogen One, and we’ll have to see a model that works before we can say anything substantive about it. Modular phones have sputtered for years now, glasses-free 3D isn’t exactly a new concept, and the phone itself is still chunky and expensive.

But assuming RED can get it out the door, the Hydrogen One is shaping up to be one of the more purely interesting smartphones in some time.

Source: Business Insider 
-Agencies