Honor’s AI-Powered, Gimbal-Equipped Robot Phone Just Launched in China and it Looks Wild

When Honor first announced that it was developing the gimbal-equipped Robot Phone last fall, it seemed like a far-fetched idea that might ultimately stay in the realm of a prototype. Companies are always coming up with wild ideas, only some of which ever reach market. Well, the Honor Robot Phone is very real, and it just launched in China.

PetaPixel first got its eyes on the Robot Phone earlier this year.

“Inside its booth, Honor also showcased comparisons and deeper dives into how the stabilization works. The most obvious discrepancy lay in the Robot Phone next to an iPhone, both mounted on a rig that constantly moved and rotated, with live views showing the massive difference in footage. The Robot Phone looked like it barely moved, if at all, whereas the iPhone was a shaky mess,” wrote Ted Kritsonis for PetaPixel.

“An Honor staffer walked on a treadmill while recording video with jittery results, while another did it with a Robot Phone, where the footage looked like she was standing still. In a hands-on space, two dancers at different times performed routines with the gimbal and camera following them the whole time. Interestingly, it also tilted at times to create a cinematic touch in following movement, similar to how a camera operator might.”

While PetaPixel has not yet gotten its hands on the Honor Robot phone, these initial impressions seem backed up by real-world experience. Dominic Preston of The Verge describes the Robot Phone’s gimbal as “better than a gimbal in a phone has any right to be.”

Honor itself is leaning heavily into the stability of its Robot Phone’s gimbal with its marketing materials. The Chinese technology company has put its phone into the hands of numerous filmmakers, including Oscar-winning Chilean cinematographer Claudio Miranda.

While it is difficult to fully assess the Robot Phone’s image quality based on YouTube videos alone, Miranda’s video above and the others below all demonstrate the impressive effectiveness of the phone’s gimbal technology and how the camera can use AI to track subjects and deliver dynamic camera movements.

Regarding image quality, though, one known quantity is that the Robot Phone’s color science and image processing are powered by legendary cinema company Arri.

“Honor is pioneering a new era of mobile imaging, where technology exists to inspire creativity and storytelling,” said James Li, Honor’s CEO, in March.

“Arri has defined the visual language of cinema for generations. Through this collaboration, we are bringing those cinematic standards and professional workflows into mobile imaging, enabling creators to craft stories with greater authenticity and emotional depth.”

The Honor Robot Phone includes a 200-megapixel main gimbal camera with a relatively large Type 1/1.28 image sensor and fast f/1.6 lens. It lives on a retractable, motorized 4DoF gimbal system, which Honor says is the smallest of its kind in the world.

Thanks to the gimbal, the main camera can also automatically capture and stitch nine photos to create a large panoramic photo, which is an interesting feature. Users can also take advantage of various Arri-developed film profiles for both photos and video.

While the gimbal camera is the star of the show, the Robot Phone has a pair of other rear cameras. There’s a 200-megapixel periscope telephoto with a 62mm lens, large Type 1/1.4 sensor, and f/2.6 lens. There’s also a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera with an unspecified sensor size and 122-degree field of view.

The Honor Robot Phone records 4K video at up to 120p, or 60p with LogC3, and 1080p video at up to 240 frames per second.

With its gimbal camera retracted, the device looks like a traditional slab phone. It has a 6.3-inch OLED screen with a ridiculously high 6,800 nits of peak HDR brightness. It runs un Android, has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, and comes in 512GB and 1TB variants.

The Honor Robot Phone starts at 9,999 yuan in China, which is nearly $1,500 at current exchange rates. It’s not clear when the Honor Robot Phone will launch outside China.

Image creditsHonor