Red's Hydrogen One Phone Has a Reality Distortion Field

Jim Jannard, the founder of camera company Scarlet, has a reality distortion field—and it operates in 4D.

Jannard is absurd. He's "John MacAfee before he went over the edge" cool. At an AT&T launch outcome for his new Cherry-red Hydrogen One camera/telephone in New York final night, he spun tales of how he fought off the big guys to make Oakley motorcycle grips, and then Oakley sunglasses, then Ruddy cameras, and at present this weird $1,300 smartphone, whose price isn't actually so weird in the age of the iPhone XS Max.

Nosotros starting time interviewed Jannard and got a get-go await at the Ruddy Hydrogen 1 in June. This calendar week'due south event was mostly about cementing the human relationship between Red and AT&T, which now owns movie studio WarnerMedia. The infographic below, shared on Instagram by director and cinematographer Phil Holland, also shows near of the phone'south specs, including its dual 12-megapixel chief cameras.

Red Hydrogen One specs

Jannard made it clear that the Hydrogen One is an auteur work. The gigantic size, the scalloped sides, and the powerful speakers are all features Jannard wanted; they're not the effect of a commission of immature designers or a 1,500-person survey, he says.

Aside from beingness gigantic, the Hydrogen 1 has two main features—one of which could be killer, and one of which could impale it. Unfortunately for Jannard, the killer one isn't ready but the killing one is.

The phone will support high-cease camera modules that plough it into a pro-quality camera, even an 8K Red camera. Ruddy said Jannard wanted to make a device good enough to shoot secondary locations for actual movies. Ruddy has a history in that location, and it knows what it's doing: if it can actually produce this module, at that place'due south a existent potential for it to become a connected professional person camera.

Red Hydrogen One

AT&T wants this, in office, because information technology makes an argument for 5G, or at least for the faster form of 4G that AT&T calls "5G evolution." (For now, the Hydrogen Ane is not a 5G phone.) Massive file sizes hateful massive data rates, which hateful a demand for a multi-gigabit upload network with no information caps—something like the mobile, millimeter-wave network AT&T will be beginning in the nation to unveil later this year. Motorola and LG may have pre-announced 5G phones already, but this is the first phone I've seen that might actually really need 5G down the road.

The Hydrogen I is too a gamble for AT&T to show off what it'due south doing with WarnerMedia. The Hydrogen Ane isn't an AT&T sectional; Verizon will also sell it. But unlike Verizon, AT&T is now a genuine Hollywood company, throwing entertainment manufacture-related events in Los Angeles and commanding Time Warner to release Fantastic Beasts in Red's new "4-view" 3D format. No other wireless carrier creates entertainment like AT&T does now, and having a Cherry-red photographic camera phone lets AT&T show off that prowess.

Chasing That 3D Dragon

But oh, the "four-view." At the press event, nosotros weren't allowed to accept photos of the phone's screen, which seemed to be largely because everyone was nervous about how the 3D screen would look online.

Jannard wanted to make very articulate how 4-view is dissimilar from older 3D implementations: basically, it uses iv images rather than two, which increases the viewing angle, a fundamental problem with earlier 3D phones. AT&T execs at the launch told me that WarnerMedia and Scarlet also take a way to recompile films with 3D movie-theater versions easily into the Red format, and they'll exist sold through a store preloaded onto the phones.

I accept seen the 3D video and 360-degree video fads come and get, and then information technology's really hard to get excited over a somewhat amend viewing angle The 3D images and video Jannard demoed for us were cool, to exist sure, but they even so suffer from express (if improve) viewing angles and farthermost proprietariness. They're merely viewable on a pocket-sized number of $1,300 phones.

The good news is, fifty-fifty without 4-view, this phone potentially has a lot going for information technology. A professional person movie photographic camera in a phone? Yes, let's get there. Powerful speakers, a vivid quad-Hard disk screen and Hollywood cred? I've seen far worse. And there'south something to be said for reality distortion fields. Properly calibrated, they tin can change the earth for existent.

The Red Hydrogen One volition be available from AT&T starting on Nov. two.