I probably wouldn’t… but this phone’s not for me. Coming from RED Digital Cinema, the company that makes most of Hollywood’s high-end cameras, the Android smartphone doesn’t want to be called a smartphone, but rather a Holographic Media Machine. It comes with a screen that is capable of delivering glass-less 3D visuals. 3D screens could be big, HTC tried and failed, but with VR being the next big thing, who knows. All we have right now is this singular render, a code-name Hydrogen, and a price tag of $1,195 *coughs*.
Let’s have a look at the image we’ve got… That camera bump on the top clearly means business, and coming from RED, maybe it’ll rival any pocketable camera you currently own. I’m not a fan of the grips on the side of the phones because A. not everyone holds the phone the same way, and B. it solves an apparent ergonomics problem but instantly creates an aesthetic problem. I’m also having second thoughts about that charging port. It looks nothing like anything I’ve ever seen… which leads me to think that it may be proprietary. Above that, on the back of the phone, are a series of magnetic connector plates, possibly for an attachment like a flashlight (which the phone…sorry…holographic media machine doesn’t have built into it).
At a staggering price of over a grand for the Hydrogen smartphone ($1,595 for the titanium version), clearly this phone has a rather fixed purpose and therefore a fixed target audience (probably VERY serious videographers, or just plain rich people). Which makes me wonder… is the title of this article as rhetorical as you thought?
Designer: RED Digital Cinema
