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
