About two months ago, digital video camera giants RED announced that they were working on a smartphone and named it the
**Hydrogen One** . One of the reasons why this immediately had everyone’s attention was the announcement of a “holographic” display on the phone. [caption id=“attachment_3887759” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] RED Hydrogen One[/caption] While RED mentioned nothing about the technology involved till now, a
report by The Verge finally sheds some light. According to the report, the technology RED is working on comes from a partnership with a display solutions startup named Leia. Leia is essentially formed as a spin-off from HP’s research labs and was founded in 2014. Describing itself as “the leading provider of lightfield holographic display solutions for mobile”, the company speaking to The Verge explained, “recent breakthroughs in Nano-Photonic design and manufacturing to provide a complete lightfield “holographic” display solution for mobile devices, through proprietary hardware and software.”
While this comes across as tech gibberish to most of us, the basic idea is that the LCD screen projects 3D objects that can be viewed from several angles, depending on your position. Leia has also partnered with Synaptics to help users further interact with the display using gestures, either than just viewing objects. Nobody yet apart from YouTuber Marques Brownlee who was allowed an exclusive look at the Hydrogen One prototype has had a glimpse of what this really translates into. The YouTuber who has been a RED client for a while did return “impressed”. Leia, however, claims that the technology does not impact the display’s quality or battery consumption for “non-holographic” use. Hence suggesting the display could be used normally. The Hydrogen One does not have a release date yet but will cost as much as $1,195 anyway, based on its pre-order price tag.