Still photos of flowers and fire hydrants Jannard shot with the dual camera seemed to leap off the display, and watching clips from movies like Brave made me feel like the films were unfolding around me. I paused the highlight reel a few times to get a better look, and while you won't be able to see things that weren't already there, the added depth gave scenes a sense of realness and presence I've never experienced on a smartphone. The so-called 4-View (or 4V) effect is strongest when you're looking at the screen dead-on, but you'll still get a sense of it when you peer at the screen from an angle. More importantly, the 3D effect seemed to persist as I moved my head around — an impressive feat when you remember that lenticular 3D looks jumpy and jarring when you switch between different perspectives.

These 4V visuals don't just apply to videos, either. Jannard showed me a recorded demo of a first-person shooter game that looked a lot like Afterpulse, and when the player lined up the reticle to pop an enemy in the head, the barrel of the scope seemed to zoom toward me. It's unclear what kind of work developers would have to do to optimize games for the Hydrogen One, but that's arguably overshadowed by a bigger question: would they even bother to do so for a single phone? The details are still murky. Maybe the most novel demo I tried was a 4V-enabled video chat app, in which I could see my own face — captured by multiple front-facing cameras with the same in-your-face depth as those movie clips. It wasn't just cool; it was utterly transfixing.

I'm told the heart of the experience is a layer of special material beneath the display capable of bouncing light in more than two directions (sort of like this crazy projector screen I saw at CES) to provide a more pronounced sense of depth. Meanwhile, software running directly on the phone's Snapdragon 835 is used to effectively fill in the gap between the two perspectives found in traditional 3D content — it's all happening on the fly and in real-time. This results in the most immersive visuals I've ever encountered on a phone. No wonder RED wants you to actually see the Hydrogen One before you draw your conclusions about its screen: words and photos don't do it justice.