In a van sitting between the high school from Pretty Little Liars and the Stars Hollow gazebo from Gilmore Girls, RED founder Jim Jannard takes out his smartphone — the Hydrogen One — and starts whipping through demos with me. We're at AT&T's Shape entertainment conference at Warner Brothers Studios and this might be the most surreal hands-on experience I've ever had with a phone. Then again, this might be the most surreal smartphone I've ever used.
Companies have tried building modular smartphones, and have met varying degrees of success — the LG G5 and its "friends" utterly flopped while Motorola continues to push its various Mods. Companies also have tried to build smartphones with eye-popping 3D displays, and they've been abject failures. Remember Amazon's Fire Phone? No one has tried to squeeze both of those gimmicks into a single smartphone except for RED, a company that has only ever made cinema-grade digital cameras. A healthy dose of skepticism about all this isn't just helpful — it's required. Fortunately, Jannard isn't phased by the skepticism. He speaks with the surety of a man with little to lose. Read More
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