HONOR officially launched the Robot Phone in China on August 12, 2026. A compact robotic arm sits on the back, lifting the camera up and swiveling it around, which makes this a fundamentally different piece of hardware from any smartphone that came before it. Pre-orders opened the same day, and open sales begin on August 18. The 12GB + 512GB model is priced at 9,999 CNY (about 240,000 yen), while the 16GB + 1TB version goes for 12,999 CNY (about 310,000 yen).

A 4-Axis Titanium Gimbal That Raises the Camera

At the heart of the Robot Phone is a 4-axis (4DoF) titanium gimbal that HONOR describes as the smallest in the industry. The company says the mechanism alone required more than 60 manufacturing processes and over 100 precision components, and that more than 100 patents are tied to it. Compared with the gimbal assemblies found in dedicated hardware such as DJI's Osmo Pocket series, HONOR claims a 65 percent reduction in size.

The numbers show how tightly everything is packed. The titanium gimbal motor weighs 2.6 grams and is just 6mm thick, and the whole assembly fits inside a 9.6mm chassis. There is a trade-off: at 248 grams, the phone is heavy for a device with a 6.3-inch screen.

The main camera mounted on the gimbal uses a 1/1.28-inch 200MP sensor with an f/1.6 aperture. It records video up to 4K and works alongside HONOR's in-house H1 imaging chip. The control scheme is the interesting part. Voice commands like "turn around" or "focus on that person" adjust the gimbal's orientation and shooting settings. Subject tracking is automatic, with AI following a person and reframing continuously during vlogs, livestreams and video calls.

A Camera Tool and a Desk Companion at the Same Time

The gimbal is not there purely for filming. Paired with HONOR's YOYO AI assistant, the phone behaves like a small robot. It observes its surroundings, moves on its own, and locates the source of a voice so it can turn toward whoever is speaking. It also responds to gestures, so you can operate it without touching the screen.

HONOR went further and implemented more than 100 facial expression patterns, including nodding and peeking, and even added the ability to dance to music. Giving a phone a personality is not new, but HONOR positions the Robot Phone as the world's first robot smartphone precisely because it delivers that behavior through a physical moving mechanism.

Where the ARRI Partnership Pays Off

The Robot Phone is also the first product to come out of the partnership between HONOR and the German cinema equipment maker ARRI (Arnold & Richter Cine Technik). It supports native Log-C3 capture and handles LUT-based color grading on the device itself. A dedicated cinema mode reproduces the look of ARRI cinema cameras.

The remaining cameras are no afterthought either. A 1/1.4-inch 200MP periscope telephoto with 2.7x optical zoom is joined by a 50MP ultrawide that doubles as a macro camera. Putting a 200MP sensor on the telephoto side alone makes it clear this is a camera-first product.

Flagship Silicon Underneath

The camera dominates the conversation, but the base specifications sit at the top of the market. The display is a 6.3-inch LTPO OLED at 2,640 x 1,216 with a variable refresh rate from 1Hz to 120Hz. Local peak brightness reaches 6,800 nits, and an anti-reflective coating helps cut glare.

The processor is Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, with up to 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage. The software is MagicOS 10, based on Android 16. A 7,060mAh silicon-carbon battery supports 120W wired and 50W wireless charging, which is a solid figure given how much room the moving mechanism consumes.

Two colors are offered, Silver and Gray. So far the launch covers the Chinese market only, and HONOR has not detailed plans for other regions.

Summary

The HONOR Robot Phone is an experimental device that layers a 4-axis titanium gimbal and YOYO-driven robotic behavior on top of a genuine flagship foundation built around the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and a 7,060mAh battery. Starting at 9,999 CNY, it sits at the very top of the price range for camera-focused phones from Chinese manufacturers, and at 248 grams it is clearly not for everyone. Even so, as the first phone to push smartphone cameras toward physically moving hardware, the hands-on verdicts arriving after August 18 are worth watching.

※1 CNY = 23.6 JPY (as of August 17, 2026)