By Staff Writer
The company that makes high-end cameras for Hollywood movies RED is making a premium smartphone called ‘Hydrogen One’, which features hydrogen holographic display.
The Hydrogen One – which uses nanotechnology to seamlessly switch between 2D content, holographic multi-view content, 3D content and interactive – will support VR and AR content, and includes a built-in algorithm.
The smartphone maker said the device will ship in early 2018.
It is currently available for pre-order on RED’s website.
The phone starts at $1,195 (R16, 135.00) for the aluminium version, and $1,595 (R21, 536.00) for the titanium version.
Also read: Dual camera smartphones – the missing link that will bring augmented reality into the mainstream
Smartphones boasting “dual cameras” are becoming more common, and news that they will feature on the just-announced iPhone 7 Plus indicates the arrival into the mainstream.
But while dual cameras may stem from efforts to improve picture quality, it has the potential to lead us down much more interesting paths: the real story may be that Apple is using dual cameras to position itself for the augmented reality world ushered in by the Pokemon Go phenomenon.
Augmented Reality, or AR, has for years been a solution in search of a problem. In the last few months, Pokemon Go has been the app to take augmented reality into the mainstream after years in the wilderness, and with Apple’s Watch now able to run Pokemon Go directly, the company surely hopes it has found the answer. The new dual camera system in the iPhone 7 Plus may just be the platform on which to expand fully into AR.
Manufacturers present dual cameras as a means to help smartphone cameras behave more like a professional digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras – the digital derivatives of the camera design popular since the mid-20th century. The main reason for the rise in dual cameras is physical necessity. It’s not possible to attach a professional-grade zoom lens to a mobile phone – today’s smartphones are just too tiny. Alternatively, creating camera zoom features in software quickly runs into limits of picture quality. But as lens hardware falls in cost, adding another physical camera is now feasible, with software switching between the two and interpolating images from both cameras.
