Honor’s Robot Phone is a foul robotic, fascinating digital camera, possibly a good friend

After over 4 months of teasing, I’ve lastly been capable of see Honor’s Robot Phone in motion. And in spite of everything that, it appears fairly legit — simply as long as you weren’t really anticipating a robotic.

The Robot Phone may extra precisely be known as the Gimbal Phone, although I believe the corporate’s advertising and marketing division would disagree. Its large {hardware} innovation is a 200-megapixel digital camera mounted on a gimbal arm, which unfolds from the again of the cellphone once you want it, and retracts behind a canopy once you don’t.

It unlocks a set of digital camera options very similar to you’d discover in a DJI Osmo Pocket. There’s improved stabilization due to the gimbal, that means steadier video output. You can manually management the arm, rotating the digital camera or turning it up and down, or let the AI-powered topic monitoring maintain that for you, with the flexibility to rotate nearly 360 levels — that means it doubles as a selfie digital camera too. Then there are computerized taking pictures modes, just like the swiveling spin shot, and Honor has plans for different automations, together with AI video enhancing.

This alone could be sufficient to make the Robot Phone a reasonably interesting prospect for some. Sure, it’s simply doing the identical stuff as an Osmo Pocket. But by combining that digital camera with a cellphone, content material creators would be capable to shoot and edit solely on a single system that matches into their pocket, and the remainder of us may get a cellphone with — supposedly — considerably improved video efficiency and main-camera high quality for selfies.

The {hardware} achievement alone right here is clearly spectacular. It won’t be clear from pictures, however the Robot Phone’s gimbal arm is smaller than any in DJI’s Osmo Pocket line. Honor claims it’s 70 % smaller than the competitors, and is now the smallest 4DoF (4 levels of freedom) gimbal system within the trade, although that’s counting its skill to fold out and in of the cellphone’s physique, with three axes for the principle gimbal arm.

Shrinking the gimbal “involved two key hurdles,” I’m instructed by Thomas Bai, one in every of Honor’s product consultants. “One, sourcing ultra-thin materials to make the motor small and lightweight; two, using ultra-strong materials to ensure rigidity and durability despite the thin structure.” Those are the identical hurdles confronted when designing a foldable cellphone, so Honor repurposed the metal and titanium alloy used within the hinge of its Magic V6 when developing the micro motors that make the arm transfer.

The apparent threat is {that a} smaller gimbal seems to be a worse gimbal. At its MWC sales space Honor didn’t present the Robot Phone’s digital camera up in opposition to both DJI’s Osmo Pocket 3 or any bigger gimbal techniques. Instead it set its gimbal up in opposition to a flagship cellphone from Vivo — lengthy a forerunner in cellphone digital camera stabilization — the place it appeared to report considerably extra secure video, whether or not being spun in a circle or carried on a treadmill.

In a quirk of timing, this has all arrived simply days after Samsung revealed its super-steady Horizon Lock stabilization on the Galaxy S26 telephones. That does a exceptional job at taking pictures regular, stabilized video, even because the cellphone itself shakes or rotates dramatically. One of the checks for Honor now can be whether or not its advanced, and probably costly and fragile, {hardware} answer delivers sufficient of a lift in high quality to justify it over Samsung’s software program answer. Much of that may depend upon how good the digital camera itself is, however past the megapixel rely, Honor hasn’t mentioned a phrase about what specs to count on there.

Of course, Honor’s gimbal-equipped cellphone delivers extra than simply stabilized video. The topic monitoring appeared quick and pretty efficient too, although it was attainable for somebody to maneuver shortly out of body and get misplaced by the digital camera. The secure gimbal arm ought to assist enhance low-light pictures too, although Bai instructed me that isn’t the Robot Phone’s focus as a result of it’s an issue the corporate’s flagship telephones have “already solved,” whereas secure video taking pictures is “much, much harder.”

You can see that mirrored, albeit in a really completely different method, in native rival Vivo’s MWC announcement. The firm took to Barcelona to tease its upcoming X300 Ultra, set to launch in Europe for the primary time, and with a renewed deal with video. In Vivo’s case, which means 4K 120fps 10-bit Log recording on all three rear lenses, a brand new professional video digital camera mode, and numerous enhancements to how the cellphone handles lookup tables (LUTs). More eye-catching is a brand new official digital camera cage accent, produced with SmallRig, designed for regular taking pictures and modular accent attachment. It’s a really completely different strategy to Honor’s, extra targeted on integration into advanced, skilled workflows than easy content material creation on the go, however it clearly displays the identical outlook: If you need your cellphone digital camera to face out from the gang, video efficiency is now the way in which to do it.

I’ve gotten this far with out ever actually speaking in regards to the robotic of the Robot Phone, and that’s on function. The solely demo Honor was capable of present me was a glorified LLM chatbot app — utilizing a Chinese mannequin that Honor declined to call — bolstered by occasional cutesy noises and gestures. You can ask the cellphone if it likes your outfit and it would nod its “head” whereas it compliments your costume sense, or in case you inform it to play music it is going to dance alongside to the beat — although in its demo model, it completely needs to hearken to Imagine Dragons, proving that even in the case of robots, there’s no accounting for style.

Bai instructed me the corporate is creating an adjunct to permit you to clip the cellphone to your backpack, suggesting it may discuss to you whilst you stroll, explaining the world you’re in in case you’re wandering round on trip or simply chatting away to maintain you from feeling bored. “Rather than reacting solely through screens and voice commands, Robot Phone perceives and responds through motion,” Bai says. “Multimodal perception means it can identify sounds, track motion, and maintain visual awareness, creating a more natural, sensory, and intuitive interaction model.”

But how far Honor sees this relationship going is unclear: At one level Bai tells me the cellphone might be “a real companion, humanlike,” however later suggests it’s “not that much like a companion, but can just make you feel comfortable, and that’s enough.” Will the Robot Phone be your good friend? Even Honor doesn’t appear to know.

It might come right down to a cultural divide. While Honor insists that the Robot Phone will go on sale within the second half of this 12 months, that may solely be in China. Bai suggests {that a} world launch — maybe for this cellphone, maybe a future model — is a minimum of a chance, however the firm isn’t placing a timeline on it. Companion robots are extra deeply rooted in some Asian international locations than they’re in Europe and the US, the place robots have a tendency to sit down someplace between purposeful servants and terrifying Terminators. Perhaps that’s why the Robot Phone’s Chinese debut leans so closely on its position as an “ever-present companion,” with “not only intelligence but also emotion.” If the Robot Phone ever does attain the remainder of the world, I’d count on Honor to pitch it extra on its digital camera than its cuteness.