RED's Hydrogen One holographic smartphone is here
Display has 3D visuals you can view without special glasses, and offers games and movies converted to the format
Most leading phones offer the same basics: big screens, decent battery life and good cameras. So when a newcomer brings something innovative to the party, why is it difficult to break through a phone market dominated by Apple and Samsung?
One such smartphone comes out this week from Red, a company with roots in digital cameras for movie productions. The new Hydrogen One has a holographic screen that produces 3D visuals users can view without special glasses. It is launching with two major movies converted to this format and allows users to create and share their own videos shot with the phone.
Red’s sales goals are modest – about 16 million units a year, based on its stated target of 0.5 per cent of Samsung’s sales. But the Hydrogen One carries an expensive HK$10,100 price tag.
Red calls the holographic screen technology 4V, for four view, which is another way of saying it’s doubling what twin-lens 3D cameras produce by adding depth data to each image. There’s a special material under the screen that lets 4V photos and video appear to the viewer in 3D.
Images that aren’t shot or converted to this format will look the same as they do on any other screen. Attempts to photograph a 4V screen will also produce images that don’t look any different.
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The 3D wizardry indeed works, though it’s more pronounced in some scenes than others. Images of a soccer goalie blocking a shot feels realistic, but a waterfall at Yosemite National Park looks like video taken with a regular camera (though leaves in the foreground looked 3D). The Red phone might remind you of holographic stickers in which the view shifts slightly as you tilt them.
Film studio Warner Bros is giving customers of parent company AT&T two free 4V movies: the first Harry Potter prequel, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, which is set in a virtual world.
Bonus: Check out this guide from The Telegraph on how to turn your current smartphone into a 3D hologram projector.