The upcoming Hydrogen One smartphone from camera maker RED is exciting for two reasons, the modular design and the Holographic display. We’ve seen some information about modularity but little about the holographic display since the announcement, now RED has announced their display partner, Leia INC. and detailed how it works.
Leia is a spin off from Hewlett Packard, who developed a lightfield technology for mobile devices. It’s both a hardware and software solution which developing a lightfield display technology platform for mobile devices which allows them to create 3D shapes in a space raised above the screen. The exact description of how it works was provided in their announcement, which says:
Leia leverages recent breakthroughs in Nano-Photonic design and manufacturing to provide a complete lightfield “holographic” display solution for mobile devices, through proprietary hardware and software. The Silicon Valley firm commercializes LCD-based mobile screens able to synthesize lightfield holographic content while preserving the normal operation of the display.
The only instance we’ve seen of the lightfield technology in action was in a brief display given to YouTuber Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) who was merely allowed to post a reaction video to him seeing it – not the actual technology itself. You can see a bit about what they intend in this video on holographic mobile displays from 2015:
The RED Hydrogen One will launch in Q1 2018, you can pre-order now, but at $1,195USD ($1483AUD) for an aluminium model or $1,595USD ($1979AUD) for a titanium model that’s a lot of money on an untested technology.
