RED’s Hydrogen One phone had a rocky rollout to say the least, and founder Jim Jannard has offered a partial explanation while announcing the first details on the device’s successor. In a post on the Hydrogen-focused H4Vuser.net website, Jannard blames the Hydrogen One’s unnamed Chinese ODM (original design manufacturer) for having “significantly under-performed” and making it “impossible” to fix the issues with the phone.

Now Jannard’s attention is on the Hydrogen Two as well as a long-promised camera module that will work with both phones. The Hydrogen Two is being designed “virtually from scratch” in partnership with a new ODM that is “clearly more capable of building and supporting the product we (and our customers) demand,” Jannard says.

Meanwhile RED itself is now working on the cinema camera module, since the previous ODM “was not going to competently complete the module that they committed and guaranteed to do,” according to Jannard. The new module is called Komodo and its capability will supposedly “vastly exceed” the one that was originally planned. Jannard says it won’t match the existing high-end RED cameras, unsurprisingly, but it’s intended to be a “complementary camera for cinema-grade images at the highest level at lower pricing.”

Hydrogen One owners will get “significant preferential treatment” for Hydrogen Two and camera module orders, Jannard says, including an unspecified discount. No word on when either product will land, though it’d be best to be skeptical about RED’s commitments in any case.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/24/20708193/red-hydrogen-2-announced-camera-module