Comment by bee_rider
4 years ago
I think this is not exactly what GP was talking about. These are normal phones with an expensive marketing gimmick.
The "RED Hydrogen One," by that fancy camera company is closer I think. At least it had some story that could hypothetically have ended with a compelling technological reason for it to exist (RED is supposed to know cameras). Although, it didn't seem to work out either, but with a sample size of 1 it could be a fluke of poor execution.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/red-quits-the-smartp...
I'm surprised none of the really consumer-oriented camera companies have broken into smartphones. Camera stuff seems like more of a selling point for smartphones, than phone stuff. But, it seems like they never really want to dive in fully.
Leica tried making one in Japan, but apparently camera cameras and smartphone cameras are somewhat different beasts.
I enjoyed MrMobile's review: https://youtu.be/skIgG8q_lKs
Yeah, this came up when I was looking around. I'd call it a case of not diving in fully. Since it is really just a rebrand of a phone from some other company (albeit one for which they provided the optics).