RED admits to Hydrogen One troubles and commits to improved Hydrogen Two

There were plenty of stumbles along the way for RED bringing its first smartphone to market. The Hydrogen One didn't quite live up to expectations but RED is ready for round two, with the Hydrogen Two set to launch some time soon with a new design to avoid the issues encountered with the first device.

According to RED founder, Jim Jannard, a lot of the issues found on the Hydrogen One were due to an unnamed original design manufacturer in China. The company says that the manufacturer it partnered with “significantly under-performed”, which made fixing issues very difficult. Now, RED is going to be trying again and implementing changes for the Hydrogen Two based on lessons learned bringing the first phone to market.

The Hydrogen Two is being designed “from scratch” in partnership with a new manufacturer that is “more capable of building and supporting” the product RED wants to build. Unfortunately, we don't really know much else about the Hydrogen Two at this point in time, although we do know it will still support the modular component concept, as RED has begun work on a cinema camera module.

This module is called ‘Komodo' and will “vastly exceed” the cinema camera module originally planned for the Hydrogen One. Given the amount of issues that came with the Hydrogen One, owners will get “significant preferential treatment” when the Hydrogen Two and its cinema camera module are ready to become available, which will include a discount.

KitGuru Says: The Hydrogen One didn't do as well as hoped but perhaps the Hydrogen Two will be improved all around. Not just in terms of the hardware, but in manufacturing, availability and software. From the sounds of it, the Hydrogen Two is still in the early stages though, so it could be quite a while before we hear more. 

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