Honor has been teasing the Robot Phone for almost a year now. When I first saw its prototype at CES 2026 in January, I thought it was just that… a prototype. It seemed like a far-fetched idea; too ambitious to be true. I assumed it’d be a concept device at best. Then I saw a working model at MWC in March and fast-forward to August 2026: the Honor Robot Phone is real and now available for purchase in China. It was announced on August 12 at an extremely competitive price of 9,999 yuan (~$1,482) for the base variant with 12GB of RAM.

The all-new Honor Robot Phone is a creator-focused product. It has a robotic gimbal built directly into the phone’s camera module. Instead of housing the conventional camera setup, it has a robo arm that can physically move to track and stabilize the subject. The Robot Phone also offers special tilt movements and Cinematic Imaging Partnership with ARRI for a comprehensive video shooting experience. Honor wants this to be a compact filmmaking device.

While a few hours aren’t enough to judge such a new product, I went hands-on with the Honor Robot Phone to experiment, shoot and order iced tea using its gimbal camera system and Yoyo AI agent. Here’s what happened next.

A Gimbal With A Personality

Honor’s new phone looks like just another flagship smartphone from the front. You get a 6.3-inch OLED display with a punch-hole selfie camera and thin bezels. It is only once you turn it around that you can see the gimbal robo arm housed inside a transparent door. You need to slide the door open, go to the camera app and press the button located below the shutter button to activate the gimbal. Once pressed, the gimbal swings out of its rear housing and you’re now ready to shoot. Or you can activate it with a hand gesture.

One of my first demos involved none of the camera magic and 100% of agentic AI. I activated the robo arm by flipping my hand in front of the screen. It automatically launched the Yoyo app (Honor’s agentic AI app) to turn my phone into a smart personal assistant. I requested it to order an iced tea for me. The agent works better in Chinese but it was easily able to register my request in English.

The robo head nodded and the AI continued to complete my order in the background (after entering the payment password). The process was fast enough to not feel bothersome.

Honor says its gimbal system supports ten gestures (including nodding) to express itself to you. It can shake its head to dance to a tune, or tilt it to convey that it is thinking. This is paired with over 100 emoji options that appear on the screen based on the activity. However, the Yoyo AI stuff can be activated (without the gimbal or emojis) on any other Honor phone in China. The gimbal just adds more personality to the AI.

A Phone Made For Creators

The new Honor phone is built for creators who want to shoot videos without needing a separate device. It aims to give you a DJI Osmo Pocket- or Insta360 Luna Ultra-like experience on your smartphone itself.

Honor says the gimbal module inside its Robot Phone is 65% smaller than traditional gimbal solutions. The company is calling it a “4DoF Titanium Agile Gimbal,” which also integrates a 200MP 1/1.28-inch sensor. It is accompanied by two more (immovable) cameras, including a 200MP periscope telephoto camera using a 1/1.4-inch sensor, with support for 2.7x optical zoom and a 50MP ultra-wide camera.

The main camera is co-developed with Hollywood cinematography giant ARRI. You also get a dedicated ARRI mode in the camera viewfinder to shoot LOG footage and add cinematic filters. I couldn’t test its capabilities fully, but here’s what I noticed during my hands-on:

  • Honor has borrowed several features from handheld gimbals to make the most of its unique Robot Phone design. For instance, you get six dynamic camera modes - AI SpinShot, default stabilization, tilt locked, super steady, FP and FPV vertical - to add super cool effects to your shots without physically moving the phone.
  • It offers an array of ARRI cinematic filters to apply classy film looks to your footage with just a few taps.
  • You can control the gimbal with an on-screen controller, which is located right where you’d ideally find the shutter button. Press and swipe it towards the direction you want to move the gimbal.
  • The phone supports subject tracking but it is a hit or a miss, depending on the lighting and the number of people in your frame. It worked in bright light but struggled to track me in a low light indoor environment with a few people in the background.
  • Honor’s phone gimbal system is not free of handheld gimbal limitations. It can shoot in both vertical and horizontal modes, but when shooting in vertical mode, it digitally crops the footage and reduces the resolution from 4K to 2.7K. You can overcome this by holding the phone in landscape orientation, but it won’t be ergonomic for long videos.

As for everything else, the Honor Robot Phone has a 6.31-inch OLED display with support for a 6,800-nit peak HDR brightness and 2640x1216-pixel resolution. It is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, paired with 12GB or 16GB of RAM. The new phone packs a 7,060mAh battery with support for 120W wired and 50W wireless charging. It runs MagicOS 10, based on Android 16 and won’t be launching outside of China.

The Honor Robot Phone Is An Ambitious, Bold And Daring Idea, Executed Impressively Well

It might be a niche product but the Honor Robot Phone feels genuinely refreshing (and exciting). During my brief hands-on, it didn’t feel heavy in the hand and watching the gimbal unfold was fascinating every time.

Honor could’ve limited the robo arm to videography, but it also integrated expressive head movements and gave it a personality. It made the novelty fun to use. This design won’t go mainstream or reach the masses, given its China-only availability, but the Honor Robot Phone will stand out as the most exciting, unusual and fun slab phone launched in 2026.