For those of you who may not have been following the highly anticipated release of the first “holographic phone“, here’s a quick recap of what’s been going on. A high-end cinema camera company, by the name of RED, has been working on a fully functioning holographic phone. Through a partnership with Leia Inc., the team at RED developed a phone capable of displaying the “H4V” media format (think .mp4 or .jpg but for holograms.) To make this work however, you’ll need to do a little more than just take an ordinary picture. In order to capture an image or video in the H4V format, you essentially need four separate cameras to record the object from different viewing angles. Once the object has been recorded this way, the RED Hydrogen One’s unique display can be used to produce the hologram.
With what was originally supposed to be a summer release, the RED Hydrogen One has still not been made available to the public (as of the time of this writing.) That being said, we do know that a hard release date has been set for November 2nd, 2018. So we’ll only have to wait a few weeks to see if RED can deliver on their promise. In the meantime, here’s an infographic from director/cinematographer Phil Holland that shows just what the RED Hydrogen One is made of.
RED’s Holographic Phone Specs
Image: Phil Holland
As you can see from the image above, RED has thrown everything but the kitchen sink into their flagship device. From some of the most advanced cameras ever used in a smartphone (both the front and rear facing ones) to the fingerprint scanner and powerful battery, you can tell this is truly a luxury device. Putting those aside, the main feature to notice here is the holographic H4V LCD display. With a size-able 2560×1440 resolution and 515 pixels per inch, the display by itself is worthy of a top-tier smartphone. Add in the holographic capabilities, and you have a device thats deserving of the hype its been getting.
One thing to note, is that the phone’s processor will be last years Snapdragon 835, instead of the more recent Snapdragon 845, which is currently powering the latest iOS and Android devices. So keep that in mind when deciding whether or not the RED Hydrogen One is worth the $1,200 price tag.
