While Honor has already made several product announcements with tablets, foldables, and more, its most interesting device at MWC 2026 is the robot phone — and perhaps the humanoid robot that came with it.
After briefly showing off a model at CES, Honor isn’t quite ready to launch its robot phone. However, we got more details, tech demos and a closer look following the company’s MWC press event in Barcelona. The robot phone is currently scheduled to launch later this year.
Honor has put a lot of effort into ensuring that its camera gimbal is highly mobile, even going so far as to create a tiny personal robot that is, dare I say, adorable? The robot phone’s pop-up camera can tilt its head, shake to say no, nod to agree and even “flip” – or at least rotate 360 degrees. According to Honor’s presentation, it can also play along with songs. A spokesperson told me there are five songs in its repertoire, so it’s unclear whether they’ve been programmed for demos like this, or will be a feature of the final retail device.
Another demo here at MWC showed how you can put the robot phone to “sleep” by covering its gimbal eye, though it’s weird that the camera is still open instead of folded. My main concern with the robot phone is the strength and durability of its robotic mechanism. We have gone through several waves of smartphones that attempted very simple mechanical camera functions and the danger of users with dust or heavy hands cannot be ignored.
Image by Matt Smith for Engadget
The company says it has taken what it has learned from foldables regarding high-performance materials and simulation accuracy and applied it to shrinking the camera module. On stage, Honor CEO James Lee revealed what he calls the industry’s smallest micro motor, which is much smaller than a 1-euro coin and, he said, 70 percent smaller than existing micro motors.
Since this component has been significantly reduced, the robot phone’s gimbal will be the industry’s smallest 4-degree-of-freedom gimbal system. It’s a uniqueness – we finally got a uniqueness! It will also offer three-axis stabilization in this smaller camera package, with the primary camera using a 200-megapixel sensor.
The fold-away panel that houses the primary camera also reveals more specialized cameras, so you won’t be forced to use a gimbal if you don’t need it. Still, this is a pretty thick camera unit:
Image by Matt Smith for Engadget
Honor has already started building out the camera modes and features with Super Steady Video Mode, which increases stability while moving the robot phone around to capture videos. AI Object Tracking will obviously follow subjects intelligently, while AI SpinShot supports intelligent 90-degree and 180-degree rotational movement for more cinematic transitions. We’ve seen these types of pre-programmed movements and functions in full-sized phone gimbals and action cams. If Honor could introduce it in such a small form factor, it would be impressive.
Other specifications were sparse during Honor’s press event, although the company did announce a collaboration with ARRI Image Science to bring its cinematic smarts to the robot phone’s gimbal camera.
In a press release, Honor’s Lee said the collaboration will bring ARRI’s “cinematic standards and professional workflows” to mobile imaging. This is apparently the first time that elements of ARRI Image Science are being integrated into a consumer device. Dr. Benedict von Lindener, vice president of ARRI, said the goal is to bring true cinematic beauty such as “natural colors, gentle highlight roll-off and a sense of depth” to shooting with Honor smartphones.
Image by Matt Smith
Honor also created a humanoid robot companion for its robot phone. The bot took to the stage with a robot phone, danced with human dancers, did a backflip and shook the hand of CEO James Lee. It didn’t say anything, but luckily, during some on-the-rails banter between the robot, the robot phone, and Honor’s CEO, the robot phone was noticeably talking.
Like many humanoid robots we’ve reported on and seen in person, Honor hopes to put it to work in both industrial and domestic settings, presenting it as a central part of the company’s multi-million-dollar push into AI. Currently it is being called Honor Robot.
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