RED, the ultra high-end camera company with a flare for dramatic product designs, has announced an Android smartphone called the “RED Hydrogen.” The press release is very light on details and written in RED’s typical maximum-hype style, declaring that phone “shatters the mold of conventional thinking” and “features nanotechnology.” There are a few details we can try to translate into English, though.
First up, I’m not even quite sure what the phone’s official name is. The website calls it the “RED Hydrogen,” while the “Product Detail” PDF calls it the “RED Hydrogen One.” The tag line calls this device a “Holographic media machine in your pocket” and says the 5.7-inch display “seamlessly switched between traditional 2D content, holographic multi-view content, 3D content, and interactive games.” So presumably, like a Nintendo 3DS or HTC Evo 3D, this will come with some kind of special autostereoscopic 3D display.
The talk of holography is a reference to something called “RED Hydrogen 4-view content (H4V)” which sounds like a new proprietary format from RED, but the company hasn’t defined or announced H4V anywhere as far as we can tell. “Hydrogen” seems to be the branding for whatever this new imaging format is. The phone is also the “Hydrogen media machine,” and, with a future accessory, you’ll be able to record a “Hydrogen format holographic image.” The release goes on to call the phone a “Control center for the hydrogen system” and will integrate with RED’s cameras as a “user interface and monitor.”