okay so you know when you're at a friend's house and out of politeness you
wolfed down the butternut squash giving your compliments to the chef
and then to your utter dismay they plop another giant helping on your plate
well today's subject is a little bit like that because we still
can't quite figure out who asked for some of the features of the phone we're
reviewing today the red hydrogen one
but you know what you guys were asking for i'm sure
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our titanium version of the hydrogen one arrived in a nondescript black box with
a letter from red explaining why we didn't actually get the titanium version
that we ordered looks like they're going to send it later but as a way of saying
sorry we actually get to keep the aluminum one that they shipped early
well i mean i think early is probably less accurate than saying less horribly
late but still two phones for the price of one overpriced one is pretty good as
apologies go and i've got to give some kudos here for
a company that doesn't always do a great job of included accessories throwing in
a fast charger was a nice touch now after about a week of shared use
between me and brandon there are some things about the hydrogen one that stand
out the build quality is exceptional with the phone being made
of mostly metal with these scalloped ridges on the side that actually helped
with grip more than i anticipated another unexpected benefit of the
scallops is that they make it really easy to find the power button which
doubles as the fingerprint reader this was a problem that i noticed with the
razer phone 2 when i was using it recently that ruggedness does come with
some trade-offs though this is one
heavy phone like to give you guys some context compared to the samsung note 9
the note 9. is gigantic the hydrogen 1
is .16 pounds more and you can feel every gram
of it to the point where daily use especially with small hands like mine
did get tiring at times continuing with the physical tour we get two front
selfie cameras two rear cameras much
more about those in a moment stereo front-facing speakers a headphone jack a
tool-less sim tray the holographic qhd
display and a type-c connector at the bottom now before we get to the two big
features of this phone the display and the cameras i want to take a minute to
talk about the speakers on red's website they say
sound you didn't think to ask for and i think this was an unintentionally apt
way to describe it because if i had ever overheard someone asking for this weird
3d audio technology in their smartphone i would have told them that frankly
that's a pretty silly idea and red's implementation has done nothing to
change my mind with 3d audio enabled you are supposed
to have this expansive spatial immersive
experience but in my opinion it just sounds like a
cheap eq preset and going around the office and having others try it both
with and without headphones every single person preferred the
unaltered version and a couple people actually shared my disappointment with
the maximum volume of this thing considering how much of the phone is
taken up by speaker grills let's move on then to one of the weirdest features to
hit a smartphone in a long time the qhd
holographic display going back again to red's literature we once again find bold
claims and once again find ourselves disappointed i mean the 3d effect is
cool like when the phone first boots up
you're greeted with a stereoscopic 3d graphic that kind of
pops off the screen and shows off what the display can do
and red built what they're calling hydrogen network which is supposed to be
a hub for content that takes advantage of the display
but the demos themselves are mostly unimpressive and gimmicky feeling due to
the fact that it feels like there is a significant drop in resolution when
you're playing back with the 4v display on the bottom line is that for media
consumption the holographic effect is cool but only for about five minutes and
the story doesn't change for gaming on any of the whopping three games that are
available in leia loft none of this though would be a huge problem if it
wasn't for the glaring issues that exist while consuming normal content compared
to other flagship smartphone displays the color accuracy and contrast of the
hydrogen one is just well i don't know how else to say this
it's not even close which is an even bigger problem when you consider red's
pedigree as a content creator company you basically can't do any meaningful
photo editing on this phone which is becoming a more and more common use case
bringing us perfectly then to the elephant or would it be a dragon or
something more ferocious in the room the cameras
red is of course first and foremost a digital cinema company so how has that
translated to its smartphone the answer is
it's complicated the thirteen hundred dollar price tag on
even the aluminum version of the hydrogen one means that we have no
choice but to compare it to the best of the best
and red's lack of experience here really shows
it's not bad across the board or anything like that
but it's disappointing it leaves me wishing that red had pushed to be just a
little bit better look at this shot now the pixel 3 came out with the
closest shot to my eye with the note 9 going a little bit too far and over
exposing the building and the iphone 10s in my opinion leveling out the entire
exposure in each part of the image too much to the point where everything looks
bright and at the same time making the whole image lack any realistic depth now
the hydrogen actually did a good job with the dynamic range and if we look
closer the detail captured is actually
quite good maybe even better than the note 9. but the images from this phone
they lack color and they feel flat
honestly it feels kind of like the approach that cinema cameras take when
recording video flatter recording allows the editor more flexibility in
post-production in terms of color and it allows cameras the ability to capture a
much wider dynamic range versus if they just tried to grab something that's
closer to real life and record it straight to the camera
and this characteristic is where my conflicted feelings about the hydrogen 1
begin the hydrogen photos consistently came
out duller and flatter than any of the other phones and you might think well i
like editing my photos and a flatter image is a good starting point for a
stylized edit but these are jpegs not raws so there's
less flexibility in post and if you look closely the hydrogen one's dynamic range
is not as good as the iphones or the pixel threes which means that even with
the theoretically helpful flat look approach red is still having trouble
matching the performance of the other flagships so it's the camera not the
screen or the speakers or the weight or the price
where the hydrogen one finally really falls apart for me again it's not
terrible this portrait mode shot is being lit by a neon sign which is a very
challenging scenario and the hydrogen one managed fairly convincing and
natural looking bokeh compared to the pixel 3 with the iphone and the note
both face planting with various levels of spectacularity
but as we look through this bunch of photos
what we find is that these golden scenarios are few and far between and
overall the images captured by the hydrogen one tend to lack life
which means more busy work in lightroom for an end image that in many cases
won't be better or even as good and the holographic images are not
enough to save it selfies feel like you're
taking a photo for like a rare version of a trading card and the rear camera is
actually kind of nauseating to shoot with because the hydrogen attempts to
convey the effect in the live preview which basically just makes it harder to
tell if your photo's in focus it's a gimmick and i suspect a second
generation phone if they do one won't include it so in conclusion the red
hydrogen one is an interesting idea paired with flagship hardware from two
years ago and underdeveloped software that needs a lot of maturing before red
will be able to take on the true flagship competitors
if the camera was amazing we might be singing a different tune especially in
light of the upcoming accessories and the integration with other red products
we use them every day including this shoot this shoot right now shot on red
but as it is it's just not enough and you shouldn't
buy this phone unless you're like a
massive red fanboy and you basically just want it as like a collector's piece
i mean i'll probably hold on to it for that
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