RED Hydrogen Two – Development Announced
After huge excitement and anticipation, the RED Hydrogen One turned out to be a huge disappointment. This brought many to question the wisdom a camera maker trying to make a smartphone. Even throwing large amounts of money at it doesn’t guarantee success.
But we’re a film festival for films shot on smartphones, so of course we’re keenly interested in the progress of RED Hydrogen. It’s a smartphone specifically designed for shooting video, made by a company who makes cinema grade video cameras. This could be the game changer smartphone film enthusiasts are waiting for.
However, I think many of us expected the RED Hydrogen smartphone to follow the Amazon Fire Phone into the Room 101 for failed smartphones. Even though the message from RED was that this wasn’t over.
A couple of days ago, Jim Jannard, founder and owner of the professional cinema camera maker Red Digital Cinema Camera Company, posted an update on h4vuser.net. The RED Hydrogen Two is now in development.
A hint of desperation
Now, I’m always the optimist and hope a great video shooting smartphone comes out of RED. But I feel that in this and previous postings, there’s just something a bit desperate in the tone of communication. First, Jim takes a leaf out of a well known populist leader’s playbook by blaming China.
“While Oakley sunglasses and RED cameras were (and are) built in our own factories in Orange County, building a smartphone with challenging and new disruptive technologies at the RED factory just wasn’t possible given the competitive nature of the the market. We chose an ODM in China to prepare the HYDROGEN One for manufacture… our ODM, which was responsible for the mechanical packaging of our design including new technologies along with all software integration with the Qualcomm processor, has significantly under-performed.” Jim Jannard
Well, not the whole of China. Just their ODM (original design manufacturer). Anyway, doesn’t this sound like one of those half-thought through Kickstarter projects which fell apart when it came to manufacture in China? You can understand that from a team new to business, not not from a company running as long as RED.
He continues…
“Getting our ODM in China to finish the committed features and fix known issues on the HYDROGEN One has proven to be beyond challenging. Impossible actually. This has been irritating me to death and flooding our reactor.”
Jim’s reactor is flooded but he’s not giving up.
“…we have begun the work on the HYDROGEN Two, virtually from scratch, at a new ODM that is clearly more capable of building and supporting the product we (and our customers) demand.”
I’m guessing it’s still in China.
“The HYDROGEN Two is being methodically designed and crafted to surprise and exceed expectations… again, just as you would expect from us.”
Uhm, I’m not sure I would, to be honest. Having set up unrealistic expectations before, I’m sure most customers would be happy if RED were simply met expectations next time.
“Additionally, we eventually realized that the original camera module would have to change due to the fact our ODM was not going to competently complete the module that they committed and guaranteed to do.”
It’s not Jim’s fault. Did you get that yet?
Surely it takes a certain competence to choose a competent business partner. Especially when it comes to entering the unforgiving smartphone market.
“Our best option was to modify the program and bring it back into the RED house. We have completed the new and extraordinary sensor and redesigned the package. Jarred at RED will be posting about Komodo fairly soon. Its capability will vastly exceed the originally planned module. The HYDROGEN One and Two will integrate with this new camera. While it does not replace its big RED brothers, it will certainly be a complimentary camera for cinema grade images at the highest level at lower pricing.”
No release schedule yet
So the Hydrogen One and Two smartphones will integrate with a long-promised camera module called Komodo. Basically, it’s a smartphone with a cinema camera bolted on. However, the quality will obviously not match the existing high-end RED cameras.
It seems they’ve now realised you can’t put a high-end camera in a smartphone, so it will have to be an external camera. Unfortunately, as far as our festival is concerned, that would disqualify films shot with this device.
I don’t know, it just seems like muddled thinking to me. Combine a not-quite-as-good smartphone with a not-quite-as-good camera and what do you get? It’s almost like a camera manufacturer decided to try to jump into the smartphone market, knowing barely anything about making a smartphone.
Anyway, while the new ODM develops the Hydrogen Two, RED themselves will work on Komodo. There’s no dates provided in Jim’s post, so we will have to wait for further updates on a release timeline.
You can follow the message board discussion here.
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