*but the company has a plan to make it up to customers who pre-ordered…
Camera maker RED introduced its first smartphone this year and started shipping the RED Hydrogen One Houdini developer’s edition recently.
The commercial version of the phone is set to begin shipping in October, when RED will send Hydrogen One phones with aluminum bodies to folks who pre-ordered one for $1,295.
The plan had been to begin shipping the $1,595 titanium version next… but RED founder Jim Jannard has posted a message in the company’s user forum explaining that the first manufacturing run of the titanium version was “a disaster. All fail.”
So the company won’t be shipping that model anytime soon.
RED does have what seems like a pretty generous plan to compensate customers that had pre-ordered the titanium version of the phone: RED will send alumimum phones to those customers and when a titanium version is available, RED will send customers one of those too.
In other words, folks who pre-ordered the titanium version will eventually get two RED Hydrogen One phones for the price of one.
That said, there’s no word on how long it will take for manufacturer to work out the kinks with production of the titanium edition. So some of the phone’s hardware may start to look a bit dated by the time it’s ready to ship. Arguably it’s already a bit late to be selling such an expensive phone with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor.
That said, the RED Hydrogen One is unlike any other phone currently on the market. It has an unusual design with kevlar panels and textured edges to make the phone easier to grip, support for modular accessories such as optional camera lenses.
It also has a 5.7 inch, 2560 x 1440 pixel “holographic” display with support for glasses-free 3D effects (which RED calls “4V,” because why not?).
Other features include a 4,500 mAh battery, a USB Type-C port, a microSD card slot, a headphone jack, and stereo speakers.
The aluminum edition of the phone should go up for order in November for folks that didn’t get a chance to place a pre-order when that option was available.
They better update the specs mid-manufacturing, otherwise its still a raw deal.
I mean, we are due for a next leap in microarchitecture of the processors (it didn’t transpire with the Cortex A75), so this phone is going to be very outdated. I mean the Apple A11-Bionic, compared to the Apple A9, that’s the difference in technology we are going to see. Where in late-2019 the QSD 835 is going to become a midrange chip and the newer cutting edge are going to push the envelope.
Sort of like getting a i5-4670 when everyone has a i7-6700k, or getting a GTX 780 when there’s the GTX 980Ti….and paying triple the price for it.