RED Shows a Preview of Its Smartphone's Holographic Display

RED made a surprising announcement a few months ago, entering the smartphone market with its Hydrogen phone. What the company didn't reveal then was how its innovative "holographic" display looked. This kept us interested and anticipating what this might be. Now, however, RED lifted the curtain up a little bit more, showing us the concept behind the display.

RED now revealed that it partnered exclusively with a Leia Inc., a startup that works in the area of mobile devices providing "lightfield holographic displays." Their displays are based on a different technology than standard displays, which are not capable of projecting visuals in such a fashion.

These holographic screens are said to be capable of displaying 3D objects that look like they are protruding from the screen. By rotating the phone, or your position relative to the display, you can see the objects from different sides. Leia describes that the technology behind the display is based on the principle of diffraction of light from a standard LCD screen through a layer of nanostructures. Leia claims this technology doesn't have a major effect over battery consumption or overall thickness of the device. Although the first prototypes were described to be far from technically perfect, they were yet impressive.

RED says there is a slight delay of the official launch from the originally announced early 2018 guidance to "the first half of 2018."

[via The Verge]

Tihomir Lazarov's picture

Tihomir Lazarov is a commercial portrait photographer and filmmaker based in Sofia, Bulgaria. He is the best photographer and filmmaker in his house, and thinks the best tool of a visual artist is not in their gear bag but between their ears.

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8 Comments

They are doing announcements only due to iphone hot moment.

Just imagine... RED fiercely competing with Apple on the smartphone market. Now we expect Apple to launch a cinema camera.

Actually the RED is so much pro - oriented.... And specifically IMHO towards cinematographers....This holo thingy is a simple sales pitch for.

And by seeing it on the below's video I think it's a total nonsense, since it's killing color perception.

Preview... you mean computer rendering.

At least they described it in words and showed some kind of pre-view.

I think the current version will be far more impressive than that on the video. Those that saw the early prototypes said the device was impressive indeed but had some technical imperfections yet. From that video I don't see anything impressive. Maybe it can't be displayed well on a recorded footage, or the footage is low quality, or something else. Leia bragged that even Brad Pitt and David Fincher saw it and were impressed.

Sort of. (or yeah?) Because so far, based on what I've read, everything is happening on the display and not projecting images above it. So their "hologram" is not really the star wars holographic look. Unless the term hologram would be redefined.