Honor’s Robot Phone Has a Built-in Gimbal Camera… and It Complimented My Hair

The Mobile World Congress show floor can be a real test of patience, so when I was about to record a video and feeling a little lost, I asked an unusual source for advice.

“What do you think of my hair?” I asked Honor’s Robot Phone. The pop-up camera sitting on top of the device moved on its axis, looking me up and down.

“Your long flowing blond hair looks soft and shiny,” she tells me. “It goes well with your black dress, it gives you a warm and healthy feeling, which is great for this technical event!”

I’m still not sure I believed it, but it was definitely the confidence boost I needed right now.

I will raise my hands and agree that when the Honorable first started to say making the phone a robotI really didn’t think it would ever see the light of day. But all credit to the Chinese tech company — it really delivered.

At CES back in January, I saw an early, non-functional version of the phone, and this week at MWC, I finally saw it in action. Inside the back of the phone, hidden by a sliding cover, is a robotic arm with a gimbal and camera. To pull the camera out of its shell, you simply raise your hand to the front-facing camera, turn that same hand, and it pops out.

The camera has AI object tracking and can lock on to you as you record or interact with it, follow you or turn the phone around. It was the way he could look me up and down and tell me that my hair and clothes worked for me.

For several years, we have seen the influx of AI smartphonesbut so far, that has resulted primarily in software changes — not hardware. The Robot Phone turns that trend on its head by changing the phone’s entire design to infuse it with wearable AI capabilities.

AI is changing fast, Honor’s Robot Phone Product Specialist Thomas Bai told me as he dropped off the device at the company’s booth. Now, he added, it’s time for the phone’s body to catch up with its brain.

Read more: First Steps? Honor’s Humanoid Robot Makes Its Debut With Moonwalk and Backflip

How do you put a robot inside a phone?

I wasn’t the only one who thought that Honor might try to achieve the impossible by putting a robot inside the phone. The company also wasn’t sure if it would work. He went to a small car company, which told Honor they couldn’t help, Bai said.

Instead, Honor had to travel alone. It realized the engine would need to meet two standards, Bai said. “One is extreme light, and the second is great power.” That rang a bell, he added, “because it’s the exact same challenge we faced when we were developing folding hinges.”

In that sense, Honor’s foldable phones, like the brand new Magic V6, went so that the Robot Phone can run (or at least rotate the three-axis gimbal). The same material that Honor uses in its folding hinges — super steel and titanium alloy — is now inside a compact car, 70% smaller than anything currently available on the market.

This wasn’t even the hardest part of building a Robot Phone. “Space is a big challenge, because inside a flagship smartphone, every millimeter is important,” said Bai. Despite this, Honor did not have to make any compromises, he added.

“Everyone says, if you want to put a gimbal on a phone, you have to sacrifice battery life,” Bai said. And, Honor’s expertise has found a slim, power-hungry foldable design has come to fruition here. The same silicon-carbon battery technology which powers the V6 inside the Phone Robot.

The target market for the Robot Phone, which Honor wants to start selling in the second half of this year, is clearly content creators; the kind of people who currently use the DJI Osmo Pocket. It’s sure to grab their attention — no one wants to carry two devices when someone does — but people who own Osmos tend to have high standards for picture quality.

Will the Robot Phone be able to match the Osmo? “Absolutely,” said Bai. “We are confident in our video quality.” He points to Honor’s recently announced partnership with Arri, a camera company popular with pro-level shooters, and the company’s existing phone camera capabilities. “All of this will be done within the Robot Phone,” he said.

A 200-megapixel sensor, combined with stabilization and what Honor calls AI Spinshot (intelligent 90- and 180-degree rotating movements for fluid, cinematic transitions) sounds promising, but we’ll have to test it ourselves to be sure.

In my short demo time with the phone, I can say that it was able to swing fast enough to keep up with me as I moved, and I really enjoyed the compliments it gave me on not only my hair, but my outfit, which declared it perfect for a slightly cold and cloudy Barcelona day.

By the end of my demo, as Robot Phone and I were dancing side by side to Believers by Imagine Dragons, I almost felt like we were friends. It wouldn’t have been my first choice for the song, but that’s the thing about true friendship — sometimes you have to accept each other’s bad taste in music in order to be responsible.

Watch this: Honor Unveils Its First Humanoid Robot at MWC

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