March 12, 2019 — RED says it's creating a "professional image capture program" for Hydrogen One
A day after the Hydrogen One's modules randomly disappeared from RED's website, founder Jim Jannard took to the company's official forums to address what's going on. The full message reads as follows:
Some have noticed that we have taken down the images of the 2D module from our website.The reason for that is because we are currently in the middle of radically changing the HYDROGEN program. As I have said before, everything can and will change.A series of obstacles and then new discoveries have given us the opportunity to significantly improve the entire program, not only for HYDROGEN but also for RED.The changes create new opportunities to better satisfy the professional image capture customers as well as the casual consumer for the HYDROGEN program.The RED team, led by Jarred Land, as of now will now be fully in charge of the professional image capture program for HYDROGEN and the HYDROGEN team is fully engaged on the new in-device image capture system. Both are major advancements to what was previously posted.We are excited to share details as soon as we file the patents and lock down the changes and are all pretty excited about what is coming…As a side note… all HYDROGEN customers will be "obsolescence obsolete" when buying into the new professional image capture program.
What in the world does any of that mean? Your guess is as good as ours.
It's still unclear what's happening to the modules. RED's new focus on this "professional image capture program" makes it sound like they're being scrapped in favor of this new thing, but we still don't know what this program will actually do.
Jannard also notes that "one of the most significant 4V updates" will be arriving for the Hydrogen One in the next two weeks, but once again, he doesn't provide any clarification as to what it'll entail.
Guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens.
Original article continues below.
When it was finally released, the RED Hydrogen One was a disappointing phone to say the least. Its slow performance, poor display, and egregiously high price held it back from ever living up to the hype, but there's been one thing causing us to still hold out hope — its module system.
Unfortunately, it looks like that may not be happening after all.
As spotted by a user on the r/Android subreddit, RED recently updated its website so that the Hydrogen One product page no longer makes any mention of the phone's modules. Where there used to be an entire section on the website talking about modules that would allow for battery packs, expandable storage, and additional cameras, there's now nothing.
While this, on its own, doesn't mean that RED is completely giving up on modules for the Hydrogen One, it's still not a great look and doesn't provide much hope for a phone that's already struggling as much as it is.
Modules were supposed to be the one saving grace that the Hydrogen One had, but at least right now, they've vanished from thin air.
RED Hydrogen One review: The cinephile's dream phone ... some day
