Marques Brownlee, who uses a RED camera to make his videos and who has had a Hydrogen One for a couple of months, has just uploaded his review. It's devastating, even funny in places. He discusses the phone's cameras starting at 10:00 (he explains "Four-view" mode, which is relevant to the cameras, at 05:11). As the phone currently stands, and without the modules that have been promised for a long time and that may or may not materialise, he concludes: "Without the RED name on it, it's just some hopeless, random Android phone, probably a $400 device". The review has been up for less than two hours and there are already 120,000 views and 2,000 comments.
James Jannard is one of my idols... a true visionary of the creative hi-tech industry. Anyone who can go from reinventing fashion eyewear to reinventing digital cinema rates up there with Steve Jobs and the like. I'm confident that the Hydro 1 is a beta release that will evolve into something greater over time... Having said that... I'll pass on it for now.
I'm less sanguine. In July 2017, Jannard made a number of promises about this phone to entice people to order it at US$1300 or $1600, depending on materials, and he has not delivered on a single promise. The fact is, he has conned thousands of people into paying $1300 or $1600 for a phone that is apparently worth maybe $400. There is nothing about this phone that deserves the description beta in any respectable sense of the term (even the operating system is a generation behind), except for a physical port that costs maybe 50 cents that might connect the phone to a "cinema module" that was supposed to be delivered, along with the phone, many months ago, but is now being promised for "sometime in 2019". What's now clear is that this "cinema module", when and if it materialises, will likely involve a sensor, not just a lens, that is outside the phone. That is not only not a new idea, it puts into question the whole point of the exercise. The reviews have been merciless, and deservedly so. Some people thought that Brownlee, who is a RED fan and who has been supportive throughout, would make an effort to defend Jannard and the product. They were wrong. The fact is, there is nothing to defend, unless one wants to defend repeatedly broken promises, a phone that is worth about a third of what people have paid for it, and a camera that is, to this minute, vapourware. Last summer, I seriously considered ordering one of these phones. Thank God I didn't, and I feel a lot of sympathy for the thousands of people that Jannard sucked in. Steve Jobs, he ain't