Honor’s Robot Phone, an Android handset with a built-in extending gimbal and 200-megapixel camera, has quickly become difficult to buy after reaching its sales targets in China. The unusual device is not expected to receive a global launch.
Designed with mobile content creators in mind, the phone conceals its main camera inside the rear camera bar. Pressing a dedicated button and sliding back a protective cover causes the camera to rise from the handset and lock into position.
The camera can be controlled manually, with pan and tilt adjustments allowing users to track subjects across a wide field of view. It can also rotate through 180 degrees for selfies, or point outwards to record scenes in front of the user.
Honor has added automated spinning and panning modes intended to create cinematic movements without requiring specialist equipment. The system also offers object and person tracking, while the gimbal provides strong image stabilisation during video recording.
The moving 200MP camera is joined by a 50MP ultra-wide lens and a separate 200MP periscope camera. Those two cameras remain fixed within the phone’s rear housing.
Alongside the mechanical camera system, the Robot Phone includes AI features built into Honor’s MagicOS 10 software. Its Yoyo assistant can examine its surroundings and retrieve digital information, although its performance is less reliable when handling questions in English than in Chinese.
The phone otherwise provides the standard features associated with Honor’s latest MagicOS devices, making the gimbal and camera assembly its defining point of difference in an increasingly uniform smartphone market.
Honor Robot Phone price and availability
The Robot Phone costs 9,999 yuan, or about 1,500 US dollars, for a model with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. A higher-specification version with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage approaches 2,000 dollars.
Despite its premium price, Honor has indicated that demand rapidly outpaced its initial expectations. Supplies have been difficult to obtain at reasonable prices, and the company is now working to catch up with orders.
For consumers outside China, that demand is unlikely to translate into wider availability. Honor has launched the Robot Phone for the Chinese market only, with no international release currently expected.
