RED has delayed the Hydrogen phone to make it a better device, moving it back to an August launch date after it was thought to be released sometime in the first quarter of 2018. According to the company’s CEO Jim Jannard the delay will allow the company to make some significant improvements to the device that includes a dual camera setup on both the front and back which will enable the phone to capture 4-View video. Before, the phone would have had this feature but only with the inclusion of an add-on module that would attach the second camera, as the device was originally planned to have a single camera sensor on the back and a single camera sensor on the front.
For creators and photo/video recording enthusiasts this should be a big improvement worth waiting for even at the price of the pre-order. The phone is expected to be shown off on May 19 at RED’s studio in Hollywood but it’s also been reported that while delayed till August the phone will not be completely ready at that time. What this means, according to the CEO, is that the phone will be launching in an incomplete state.
It will have a range of updates and patches going out to it to improve it further after it’s been released and shipped out to those that bought it. Jannard even states that customers who pre-order or purchase the device early after launch should expect “more updates to the software/firmware than any other phone ever made.” This might make some customers a bit uneasy but Jannard is providing an open and honest statement on the nature of the device, building on a statement about the phone’s features and release from last year that anything with the device is subject to change, which means features may be swapped, removed, or included, and the launch date could be pushed out. As it stands the Hydrogen phone is coming with Android software and it will be unlocked so it can be used on any carrier. It’ll also come with various other specs like a 5.7-inch Quad HD holographic display, a headphone jack, dual SIM slots, a 4,500mAh capacity battery and more, assuming RED doesn’t change any of those specs before the release later this year.