Honor Robot Phone preview

We have seen many unusual smartphone designs over the years, but the Honor Robot Phone just might be the most "out there" yet. The company is offering a sneak peek at CES 2026 – the full reveal will have to wait for the MWC.

In case you missed it somehow, the Robot Phone has a unique gimbal mechanism that flips out of the back. Here you can see it retracted (left) and extended (right).

The Honor Robot Phone extending its camera gimbal

Note that the first step of this process is for the protective panel to slide out of the way to the right. This panel normally sits above the gimbal and protects the elaborately articulated mechanism.

The “robot” is a 3-axis gimbal, similar to a DJI Osmo Pocket, for example. It has a wide range of motion, which allows the phone to track objects moving around it and also adds stabilization if you are using it on the go.

Honor Robot Phone

Honor is still keeping details under wraps, e.g. we don't know anything about the sensor inside the camera module. The company has offered some hints as to what features will be enabled by this, e.g. a star tracking mode.

Naturally, this camera can be used for selfies as well as video calls – the gimbal can track you even if you walk all the way around the room. That’s cool and all, but Honor has bigger ambitions than a fancy webcam.

The goal is to create something that can observe our world and even interact with it to some extent – promo videos show that our little robot friend will have a lot of personality.

Honor Robot Phone

And, yes, we have to rely on promo videos for now – what we have in front of us is a non-functioning demo unit. We should see the robot in action when we attend the MWC in a couple of months, though.

The Honor Robot Phone can be used in two main orientations – standing upright (either in your hand, in your pocket or on a stand) and lying face down. This allows the gimbal to flip up and do its thing (you don’t need to worry about leveling the phone; the gimbal will take care of that).

As for the rest, we should note that the phone has two other cameras that sit to the right of the gimbal. We don’t have any specs for them either, but the three modules should be some variation of wide, ultra-wide and telephoto.

Honor Robot Phone

The two additional cameras are fixed in place and will be used for regular smartphone-style photo and video shooting. They also get covered up by the sliding protective panel, so we’re guessing that the gimbal and cameras can’t be used simultaneously.

This brief encounter with the Honor Robot Phone left us even more curious – the tiny gimbal is an engineering marvel, but how much actual utility is there?