We do not usually see artisanal smartphones. But the RED Hydrogen One ($1,295 in aluminum, $1,595 in titanium) could be very clearly the imaginative and prescient of 1 man, company founder Jim Jannard. Red created the primary mainstream 4K digital video digital camera, the Red One, and has since moved to 8K with its Weapon line. Coming from nowhere 19 years in the past, it is a main Hollywood title immediately. It has now constructed an enormous, heavy smartphone with an enormous battery, scalloped grips, and a modular enlargement connector for skilled video digital camera attachments. So far, so good.
After nearly two months available on the market, I am revisiting my unique take a look at the telephone to present it a correct ranking. While frequent software program updates (with extra to return) have added options, fastened bugs, and sanded away the perimeters, it prices and weighs an excessive amount of for what you are getting, and in my view, its glasses-free 3D system is an inherently unhealthy concept that ought to have been left previously.
If and when the promised RED digital camera modules come out, this telephone may discover a distinctive place as an expert digital camera management system. But proper now, the Google Pixel and Apple iPhone strains supply higher built-in cameras, until you need 3D, which you actually do not.
Physical Form
The RED Hydrogen One is a ridiculous beast—the biggest, heaviest telephone I’ve seen this 12 months. Carry it round for some time and the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 will really feel as flimsy as a bit of paper. It measures 6.5 by 3.4 by 0.4 inches (HWD) and weighs a stunning 9.3 ounces. (I typically contemplate a one-handed telephone to be something below 2.8 inches extensive.) It’s not pocketable, and you may want an enormous hand to carry it; after I gave it to a lady with smaller palms, she stated she had bother utilizing it. It’s factor the telephone has these scalloped finger grips constructed into the edges.
On the perimeters of the telephone, there is a energy button/fingerprint sensor, quantity buttons, a USB-C port, a headphone jack, and a devoted digital camera button. The 5.7-inch, 2,560-by-1,440 LTPS LCD is on the entrance, in fact; it is massive and brilliant, however with out the poppy colours we count on from another telephones’ OLED screens. It’s flanked by two gigantic front-facing audio system. On the steel ridged again, you discover a digital camera disk, an enormous RED brand, and magnetic pogo pins to connect future equipment.
RED says the telephone is rugged, product of aluminum and Kevlar, however declines to present any particular IP or MIL-SPEC ratings for it; that is likely to be due to the price of certification, or as a result of the Gorilla Glass 3 display screen appears as breakable as another.
Carrying the telephone round is unwieldy. It sits in my pocket like a big stone; I might raise it out with a sigh, maneuvering my palms round it to show the digital camera on. There’s nothing fast or easy about it, the way in which whipping out a Pixel 3, Galaxy S9, or iPhone XS is.
Processor and Performance
In certainly one of its most perplexing strikes, the Hydrogen One makes use of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor from 2017 versus the present 845 mannequin. That’s particularly irritating as a result of the 845’s improved GPU may have fastened some points with 3D gaming, and the 845’s multi-frame noise discount would positively have made a distinction with low-light digital camera efficiency.
Benchmarking the telephone resulted in numbers that look extra like a midrange than a high-end gadget. We acquired 5033 on PCMark, 6654 on Geekbench multi-core, 167.67 on Basemark Web, and 12fps on the GFXBench automobile chase onscreen benchmark. That’s just like the LG V30 from final 12 months, and properly behind the Galaxy S9, LG G7, Galaxy Note 9, and both the Google Pixel 2 or 3 on general benchmarks. The Pixel 3 XL and Razer Phone 2 each push double that body price on the graphics benchmark, which is deeply regarding in a telephone so targeted on visible output and digital camera enter.
Before you complain that benchmarks are artificial, these outcomes again up loads of the opposite frustrations I’ve with the telephone, whether or not they be HDR digital camera points or gaming body charges.
The telephone is available in AT&T and Verizon; we examined the AT&T mannequin. It has an important array of LTE bands, protecting every part that AT&T and Verizon help, in addition to 2G and 3G GSM and CDMA. (It would not have T-Mobile’s band 71, however it is not obtainable for T-Mobile.)
Call high quality is superb—the earpiece will get very loud with out distortion, and the front-facing speakerphone offers you a direct, unmuffled sound. Signal reception on AT&T’s community was unremarkable in testing. Other wi-fi requirements right here embrace dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth 5.0.
Playing music, the telephone’s front-facing audio system sound vigorously loud and do not distort, however are nonetheless as tinny as an Amazon Echo Dot. With headphones plugged in, although, the sound is superb—wealthy, loud, and deep.
The telephone we examined has 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, of which 101GB is free, together with a microSD card slot. The $1,595 Titanium model has 256GB of storage. It runs Android 8.1 slightly than the newer Android 9.0 as a result of all of RED’s proprietary 3D know-how takes loads of work to program, and 9.0 wasn’t obtainable on the time it was constructed. An Android 9.0 replace will come in the course of the first quarter of 2019, RED says.
There are some RED proprietary apps to showcase 3D content material, in addition to some AT&T bloatware. Leia Loft is RED’s tiny app retailer for 3D apps, the Hydrogen Network is the place you get 3D content material, and the RED Player is a gallery app that may present 3D.
AT&T’s particular sauce right here is the truth that it owns Warner Media, and may rework its 3D Hollywood movies into 3D content material for the telephone. If you purchase the telephone from AT&T, you get downloads of Fantastic Beasts and Ready Player One in 3D without cost.
We acquired 7 hours, 59 minutes of video streaming over Wi-Fi on the big 4,500mAh battery. That’s a lot lower than we anticipated (and much lower than the 12-plus hours we acquired on the Samsung Galaxy Note 9), presumably due to the battery necessities of the 3D display screen.
Not a $1,300 Camera
The telephone has twin 12-megapixel cameras on the again and twin 8-megapixel cameras on the entrance. It can seize 4K video at 30 frames per second, a restrict of the 835 processor; different high-end telephones can seize at 60fps. The telephone’s 2D pictures are 4,056 by 3,040, whereas 3D pictures are 3,840 by 2,160.
The digital camera is the place I see the largest enhancements within the two months because the telephone launched. RED has improved focus and added guide modes for each the 2D and 3D cameras, supplying you with significantly better management over your pictures. The software program updates additionally repair the main focus points I initially noticed.
In good, outside gentle, the Hydrogen One’s 2D mode delivers pictures which can be comparable in high quality to the Google Pixel 3, which is nice. It nonetheless falls quick in low gentle, when coping with backlit scenes, and with indoor pictures of faces.
Here’s the Pixel 3 (left) and the Hydrogen One (proper) in good gentle. Click for a bigger model.
Compared with the Pixel 3, portraits of each darkish and light-skinned folks look smoothed out and spackled, the place the Pixel’s pictures look extra exact. Backlighting extra ceaselessly ends in lens flare on the Hydrogen than on the Pixel.
In low gentle, the place the Pixel actually excels, the Hydrogen’s pictures are much less exact than the Pixel’s outside, and noisier indoors.
Here now we have the Pixel 3 (left) and Hydrogen One (proper) at night time, outside. Click to see the distinction on the bigger picture.
You have loads of video decision and body price choices now. Both the entrance and rear cameras go as much as 4K, with 24, 25 and 30fps choices (and 60, however not in 4K.) You can encode in H.264 or H.265 at knowledge charges of 42Mbps or 100Mbps. And each the entrance and rear cameras seize 3D.
4K, H.264, 100Mbps information are actually giant, however that is why you are shopping for RED, proper? Videos look terrific, strong and properly stabilized, in good gentle. In low gentle, they’re nonetheless dim and noisy, and 3D movies want extra gentle than 2D movies do.
The software program updates enhance and stabilize the 3D recording expertise, though as soon as once more, you do not need to attempt that in low gentle. The massive star right here, really, is recording in 3D with the front-facing digital camera, which supplies you an important depth impact. Unfortunately, as with all the opposite 3D options right here, you may solely see the outcomes on one other RED Hydrogen telephone, which actually reduces the function’s worth.
Betting on the Wrong 3D Horse
Without the digital camera modules obtainable, RED appears to have doubled down on its 3D—oh, sorry, “4-view”—display screen as a gross sales level. But as soon as I acquired out of RED’s actuality distortion discipline, I discovered 4-view to be simply as irritating and disappointing because the final spherical of failed 3D phones.
I will rag on this particularly laborious due to all of the overpromising RED is doing. The firm says that is “holographic,” which is totally false. It makes use of two conventional lenses and combines parallax views similar to each different client 3D product ever. There is nothing holographic about this—no lasers, no 180-plus-degree viewing angle, no perspective that shifts naturally as you progress round an object.
On a extra visceral stage, holographic pictures and movie-theater 3D movies seem to come out of a show, whereas lenticular pictures seem to fall into it. Lenticular pictures appear like dioramas. This telephone’s display screen seems to be like a diorama. It is not “coming at ya,” as they used to say about previous 3D films.
4-view, like earlier glasses-free 3D screens, makes use of a filter to direct gentle to every of your eyes, fooling them into considering a 2D picture is 3D. RED says its filter is best than earlier generations, and that it is utilizing 4 pictures slightly than two, making for a extra real looking image with higher digital camera angles.
While 4-view positively has higher viewing angles than, say, the HTC EVO 3D did, it nonetheless has the fuzzy, shifting high quality of lenticular 3D. RED says this can be a 3D you may take a look at for lengthy durations of time with out tiring out your eyes, however I discover it significantly extra dizzying and nausea-inducing than VR headset, particularly in a fast-moving recreation like Asphalt 8.
Low decision actually has one thing to do with it. In 4-view mode, the two,560-by-1,440 display screen successfully turns into 640 by 360, because it must divide itself into 4. Capturing pictures in 4-view reduces their decision, to 8 megapixels as an ordinary JPEG or 960-by-540-by-4 as a 3D picture. The pictures additionally seem very darkish on the display screen. As there is no such thing as a different gadget on the earth I can view them on, I can not inform whether or not that is an issue with seize or show.
The telephone suffers, very badly, from the proprietary format drawback. Once you have recorded your 3D pictures, you may solely be capable of view them on one other $1,300 RED telephone. (They seem as 2D JPEGs to anybody else.) 3D movies are in a singular H4V video format that nobody else has ever used.
After two months, there are a dozen or so 3D films obtainable, together with massive movies like Wonder Woman and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The movies must be bought, not rented, and typically value round $30 every (and you may solely watch them on this telephone). I watched chunks of Wonder Woman, The Avengers, and Ready Player One, and whereas they’re good transfers, I do not really feel like the commonly refined 3D results are including sufficient to the expertise to justify the fee.
Software updates have helped the 3D video games’ efficiency issues, however they have not helped availability. The endless-runner Paddington Run 4V not drops frames badly. Asphalt 8 performs higher than it did, however there are nonetheless dizzying parallax points with a few of the 3D scenes. More importantly, there have been 11 video games at launch; now there are solely 14. I’ve seen this drawback time and time once more with revolutionary telephones that simply do not have a large enough market to be goal for recreation builders.
The Future Isn’t Here Yet
I see a imaginative and prescient on this telephone. It’s the imaginative and prescient of a go-anywhere, pro-quality related film digital camera that effortlessly captures huge information and uploads them simply, most likely utilizing 5G. I do know RED’s Jim Jannard shares this concept, as a result of on the telephone’s launch he stated that he desires his telephone for use as a second-unit digital camera on shoots.
But as RED rafted down the rapids in the direction of 5G, it acquired caught in a bizarre eddy of 3D. Much of the facility and expense on this telephone appears devoted to sustaining an unique little universe of 3D content material. But it isn’t that spectacular, and I do not suppose 3D is coming again. RED would do higher to concentrate on broader, extra mainstream requirements.
The again of the Hydrogen One says “media machine.” As we use extra 4K TVs and 8K shows—do not suppose residence TVs, however suppose projectors and billboards and industrial signage—we’ll want extra tremendous high-resolution, tremendous high-quality content material, and people enormous file sizes will drive 5G adoption. That content material goes to must be steady, brilliant, and in an 8K trade commonplace format, not in some proprietary 3D format.
The pogo pins on the again of this telephone converse to this concept, however the concept hasn’t been realized but. You ought to maintain off on shopping for any RED telephones till it has been. For now, the iPhone XS has the very best moviemaking software program, and the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL are the Android camera phones to beat.