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For the better part of a year now, going all the way back to last October, HONOR has been teasing a smartphone with a camera unlike any other: the Robot Phone. Instead of a camera fixed in place to the back of the handset like you’ll see almost everywhere else, the Robot Phone’s camera is on the end of an articulated gimbal arm, like you may be familiar with from cameras like DJI’s Osmo Pocket series.
Back at CES in January we got to see the Robot Phone in person for the first time, but it was still far from a finished product — by the time MWC rolled around, we could finally check out the hardware in action. It’s been a long journey, but it’s one that’s now finally coming to an end, as we get the chance to go hands-on with this fully functional, innovative hardware.
Stephen Schenck / Android AuthorityFirst impressions with the Robot Phone are unavoidably going to be centered around the gimbal camera, and while that’s absolutely the focus here, I was first struck by the overall heft of the hardware. Users with larger phones may not bat an eye, but its 248g mass is noticeably heavier than I’m used to. That said, there’s also a 7,060mAh silicon-carbon battery present, so it’s not exactly like the elaborate camera hardware is solely responsible for the weight.
In order to pull this all off, HONOR needs to succeed on a few fronts here. The Robot Phone’s gimbal shouldn’t get in the way of normal operation. It needs to be fast and responsive, just like dedicated camera gimbals. And it needs to produce quality images.
HONOR houses the gimbal within a protective nook. Before using the camera, you need to manually slide a shutter (pictured below) open in order to free it from its enclosure — and if you neglect to do so, the camera app will yell at you deliver a helpful notice. It’s admittedly a bit chunky, but is definitely a lot easier on your pocket than carrying around a whole Osmo cam. I do wish that HONOR had automated the shutter, though, as its manual operation feels a bit out of place with this otherwise highly motorized hardware.
When you do hit the button, the gimbal swings out quite quickly, accompanied by a cute little X-ray style animation giving you a peek though the phone’s screen at the unfolding hardware. HONOR engineered some exceptionally compact yet powerful motors for the gimbal arm, ones it says are 65% more compact than traditional components.
You can manually control the camera’s position by manipulating a touch-screen thumbstick, with the gimbal following your inputs. The hardware’s capable of moving as fast as a full 360° rotation every second, but HONOR slows things down here to avoid us all getting motion sickness. In addition to manually tracking subjects, you can automatically keep them framed with AI-powered subject tracking.
Honestly, it’s all pretty slick. Even in just my short time trying things out, I was impressed with how well the whole package ultimately comes together. Having seen hardware that didn’t feel too far removed from a mock-up back in January, this was a night and day change: smooth, responsive hardware paired with the software users will actually want.
The camera software can even pull off some cinematic tricks, doing a barrel roll while you hold the phone still, and offers a number of dynamic movement modes for responding to your control. As far as image quality goes, I wasn’t able to do a deep dive during my hands-on, but I did get to see some impressive software stemming from HONOR’s collaboration with ARRI from the film industry, offering pro cinema controls and color grading, all from the convenience of your phone.
I’m not fully sold on the whole AI side of things — the company’s YOYO assistant gets Robot Phone integration, with the gimbal arm bouncing along to music or offering you beauty advice. It’s cute, but I really don’t see this appealing to the sort of shoppers who want to drop serious money on this kind of tech. But just so far as controlling the gimbal goes, or doing subject tracking when you want to walk around the room while taking a video call, HONOR seems to be hitting all the right notes.
At least one exception to the AI features is voice control, which makes a lot of sense — just tell the gimbal where you’d like it to point, and the hardware responds.
The 200MP gimbal camera may be the star, but it’s in good company, flanked by a 200MP periscope telephoto lens and 50MP ultra-wide option. And while there’s a 50MP selfie cam, thanks to the gimbal you can always just tap that one for help.
HONOR gives the phone a 6.31-inch 1216 x 2640 OLED panel with 6,800nit peak HDR brightness. It’s all powered by a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC, equipped with either 12GB or 16GB of RAM. And when that big 7,060mAh battery runs down, the phone supports 120W wired and 50W wireless charging to fill back up quickly.
Stephen Schenck / Android AuthorityBecause this is HONOR, the phone arrives running MagicOS 10, based on Android 16. And that also speaks to the elephant in the room here: This isn’t coming to the States. Today’s launch is squarely focused on the Chinese market, and while we’ll probably see things expand internationally later, no details are available on that just yet.
The Robot Phone will be available in either silver or gray — and yes, the color extends to the robot arm itself.
Even beyond the whole question of availability, I still have some big concern about issues like heat dissipation from the gimbal camera and overall hardware robustness — much like early foldable phones, this idea is going to need to prove itself. But it is very, very exciting that HONOR is finally giving shoppers that chance.
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