We heard last month that camera maker RED had plans to out its first premium smartphone, the Hydrogen One. It’s the first phone to feature a “holographic” display. But how will that work? RED is letting us in on a bit of the phone’s secret weapon. A press release from the company reveals they have an exclusive partnership with a startup called Leia Inc. (yes, THAT Princess Leia). The company describes itself as a “leading provider of lightfield holographic display solutions for mobile.” Leia Inc. was founded in 2014 as a spin-off from HP’s research labs.
How is RED leveraging the tech then? Here’s a description of how it works:
Leia leverages recent breakthroughs in Nano-Photonic design and manufacturing to provide a complete lightfield “holographic” display solution for mobile devices, through proprietary hardware and software. The Silicon Valley firm commercializes LCD-based mobile screens able to synthesize lightfield holographic content while preserving the normal operation of the display.
The concept video above shows how the tech could work. As you can see, the idea behind it is the screen can project three-dimensional objects you can see from various angles, depending on your physical position. So, for a mapping app, it’ll let you take a peek at a model city of sorts. And then you’ll be able to interact with the objects “above” the display using gestures enabled by Leia’s work with Synaptics.
As The Verge explains, the technology makes use of diffraction, which produces a lightfield illumination using a layer of nanostructures added to a typical LCD diplay. According to Leia, this “diffractive lightfield backlighting” won’t significantly impact display quality, the thickness of the screen, and battery consumption. Of course, it’s too early to tell at this point. The RED Hydrogen is expected to drop in the first half of 2018.