Red quit the smartphone business after one $1,300 phone and zero camera modules

Red, the high-end cinema camera company, began teasing its first smartphone in 2017: the Hydrogen One, a $1,300 slab with an aluminum or titanium body, ribbed hand grips, a 'holographic' 3D display, and a modular system that promised, one day, to put an actual Red camera module on your Red smartphone. Red said the phone would 'shatter the mold of conventional thinking', calling it a 'holographic media machine in your pocket'.

It was, as Ars Technica's Ron Amadeo put it, 'all talk'. The phone missed its 'Q1 2018' release date and shipped in November 2018 with year-old specs — a Snapdragon 835 when rivals shipped the 845, Android 8.1 when rivals shipped 9.0. The Verge called the holographic display 'blurry and bad', with almost no 3D content; the camera was off-the-shelf and middling. The promised 'cinema grade camera module', power packs and storage add-ons were never produced, and in March 2019 all module references were scrubbed from Red's site, with Jannard teasing a Hydrogen Two instead.

Jannard blamed Red's Chinese ODM, which handled 'the mechanical packaging of our design including new technologies along with all software integration with the Qualcomm processor': '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.' In October 2019 he announced on the Hydrogen forums that he was shutting down the HYDROGEN project — and retiring — promising the Hydrogen One 'will continue to be supported', though its last update had come in January and it still ran two-year-old Android.

A $1,300 phone sold on promises: no modules ever shipped, updates stalled in January 2019, and the Hydrogen Two was cancelled

The phone launched about a year late with last-year's chipset and OS, competing on specs it could not win.

The whole pitch hung on future Red camera modules that were never produced and were quietly scrubbed from the company's site.

The 'holographic' display reviewed as 'blurry and bad' with almost no 3D content to justify the premium.

Mechanical packaging and software integration were outsourced to an ODM its own founder later called impossible to fix.

Selling a platform on promised add-ons is selling vaporware: ship the modules, or don't put the connector on the box.

The HYDROGEN project died in October 2019 with Jannard's retirement announcement; the Hydrogen Two never shipped, and the promised ongoing support for Hydrogen One owners looked moot with updates stopped since January. Red's cinema camera business was unaffected.