Red hangs up the Hydrogen phone as firm exits handset business Iconic camera company Red has upped sticks and quit the smartphone biz following the retirement of its founder Jim Jannard and mobe-fondlers' dismal reception of the firm's first effort, the Hydrogen One. In a statement issued on the Red community forums, Jannard explained the reasons for his stepping down. I have spent the …
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The cameras are very good, a lot of the major film studios use them - all the hobbit films were shot on them.
But they have always been known for professional level cinema equipment, until reading this article I didn’t know they even attempted to make a phone.
I foolishly bought one last December rather than an iPhone XR. Battery life is great but I am now on my 3rd handset as the fingerprint sensor failed on the other 2. And to add insult to injury, AT&T refuses to allow WiFi calling which Verizon and T-mobile does. The 3D camera is a neat gimmick though.
The hydrogen one was originally sold to the faithful as the epitome of REDs modular approach (https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/7/9/15944046/red-hydrogen-one-phone-modular-camera-patent), once the accessories failed to materialize they tried to market it as a high-end phone to the general public which was never going to be successful, REDs past successes largely relied on either providing functionality that no one else did or undercutting the leaders on price, something they were never going to accomplish in an industry where the leaders ship 10s of millions of units quarterly. the funny thing is the modular approach was probably doomed to failure as well, and RED seems to understand this, as the most recent camera they released, the Red Ranger, completely abandoned the DSMC2 modules in favor of all the most commonly used features being integrating into the camera body itself.
and had features that are basically six to ten years old, and there were still people to buy it ?
I am gobsmacked.
With the thickness, the bezels, the dismal camera quality, I would have expected it to be priced at $80, not more than a grand.
Extreme pricing failure.
"inventions wrapped in art".
We have a couple of RED ONE Cameras where I work (or did. I no longer work in that department, so no idea how many we have now). They are excellent cameras, and have been used on a lot of high-end TV shows, and films. I realise Art is subjective, but while I'd call Red equipment excellent , if a little over priced sometimes (we had to replace the cable to connect a video monitor to one of our Red ONEs, it was 1 ft long, had proprietary connectors and cost > £80), they are, IMO, ugly, military designs.
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