In a twist from the regular flurry of features that smartphones nowadays feature, holographic displays are generally a futuristic concept. Not for Red, as the company that manufactures expensive high-end video cameras for film-making, has now officially launched a brand-new smartphone called the Hydrogen One that is the first phone in the world to come with a holographic display.
The smartphone will be able to toggle “seamlessly” between the traditional display interface and a hologram one. The Hydrogen One phone will also feature the Android operating system, and its display size will be 5.7-inches. For movies and games, the phone can switch to its special 3D holographic mode for a more immersive experience. With holograms, Red will supposedly be able to access all kinds of content such as 2D, 3D, AR and VR along with MR, making it a hub for virtually any form of content consumption. Whether there will be apps to support all of these capabilities for the phone to run and whether there will be real application for these uses on the phone has not yet been revealed, but even as a concept, the merits of the phone have already reached stellar heights.
Reports state the phone was announced on Thursday but the company did not explicitly specify how it was able to achieve the holographic 3D interface in the first place. The company is probably keeping things hush right now, in order to build hype and to retain its standing as being the only phone right now to be capable of the feature. The phone’s USP is not only in its holographic capabilities, as the phone also comes with a modular camera unit that users will be able to switch between other camera mounts for different kinds of motion and still images, keeping in line with Red’s un-challenged video quality expertise. In order to create content for holographic content, Red has also created its own audio format that will sound like a 5.1 surround system on headphones. Fortunately, the Red phone will also come with a headphone jack, keeping things as convenient as possible for content creators. It can also be suspected that the phone could be supported by Google’s Project Tango as well, since it does support both AR and VR modes.
Forbes reports that the phone will not come cheap, as there are two variants on offer – an aluminium option that will cost $1,195 and a titanium option that will cost $1,595. Pre-orders are currently taking place online on the company’s website and the phones will be shipped in the first quarter of 2018. The company has not, however, revealed the specifications of the phone, but considering the amount of power it will require to create different formats, it seems like the phone should probably come with the latest Snapdragon processor, hopefully the Snapdragon 836 and about 6GB to 8GB of RAM. Buyers might not fully be aware of what they are buying considering that this is Red’s first phone, but for those who really want to be at the bleeding edge of MR content, then this will probably be the phone to get.
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