Meet
“Hydrogen One”, the world’s first holographic media smartphone.
Red, a digital cinema camera company that makes high-powered cameras to
shoot blockbuster films, has launched an exclusive smartphone touted by the
company as the world’s first ever phone with a ‘holographic’
display.
For those unfamiliar, the company’s professional
cameras have been used to shoot films like “The Martian” starring Matt Damon,
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” “Transformers: The Last Knight” and many
others.
Dubbed
as “Hydrogen One”, the new smartphone comes with a 5.7 inch
holographic display that can view and capture multi-dimensional images and runs
on Google’s Android OS.
According to the company’s press
release, the smartphone uses “nanotechnology that seamlessly
switches between traditional 2D content, holographic content, 3D content, and
interactive games….both landscape and portrait modes supported.” The smartphone
will enable holographic multi-view, AR, VR, MR, 2D and 3D content, etc., which
interestingly would not require users to use any 3D glasses or headset to view
the contents, which may be a first of its kind.
“With one fell swoop … the future of personal
communication, information gathering, holographic multi-view, 2-D, 3-D,
AR/VR/MR, and image capture just changed forever,” the company’s press release
added.
It
will support so-called “Hydrogen 4-View content”, a file type that Red has
produced. Its holographic content will come from RED’s own channel of movies,
documentaries and games. A user can also create .h4v (or convert 3D to .h4v)
content and upload. On the music side, there is a proprietary H3O algorithm
that translates stereo sound into expansive multi-dimensional audio. Red calls
this 5.1 on headphones. The smartphone will also come with a USB-C cable and
charger, along with an expandable Micro SD card slot.
The company also plans to sell additional
components, such as “future attachments for shooting higher quality motion and
still images as well as Hydrogen format holographic images” that connect
through a special port on the smartphone. However, no extra modules will be
available at launch.
Jim
Jannard, the founder of the company RED explained in a Red forum post, that the
device is incredible and one has to actually experience it before appreciating
it. “It is multi-view (4-view) as compared to stereo 3D (2-view). Watching
shocked faces light up when people see it is really motivating. There is no
good way to describe it until you see it. Hopefully we will get some skeptics
eyes on it soon… then they can tell you. Our display is technology you haven’t
seen before.”
Red is charging $1,195 for the “Aluminum” model and
$1,595 for the “Titanium” version, which is way too expensive for an
inexperienced smartphone maker in comparison to established smartphone market
leaders like Apple and Samsung.
“I
can assure you that after this initial releases we will not be able to fill all
orders on time due to display production limitations,” Jannard says in the
statement. And the price could go up come next year.” Jannard adds further by
saying that: “We will not guarantee these prices at the time of release.”
“This is a somewhat baffling device,” Ben Wood, chief
of research at CCS Insight, told CNBC by email.
“Red has a reputation of delivering high-performance
camera technology and that is undoubtedly one of the anchor elements of the
device together with the holographic screen, but until more concrete details
emerge it is difficult to judge”.
Pre-orders
for the phone have already started on Red’s website. If you are interested, you
can place your order here. The company plans to
present early bookers with a “special small token”. Red is expected
to start shipping of the device in the first quarter of 2018.
Source: The Daily Dot
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