On 12 August Honor announced a phone it calls the “robot phone”, saying it is the first on the market with a mechanical gimbal fully integrated into the device rather than clipped onto it.
The idea: a small motor that moves the camera
The gimbal is titanium and moves in four degrees of freedom. Its motor weighs 2.6 grams, with a control speed of 360 degrees per second.
The company says it is 65 per cent smaller than common gimbals and 200 per cent stronger structurally, and that it holds more than a hundred precision parts backed by over a hundred patents.
The cameras
Two rear cameras at 200 megapixels each: the main one on the moving gimbal with a 1/1.28-inch sensor at f/1.6, and the second a periscope telephoto with a 1/1.4-inch sensor at 2.7x. With them, a 50-megapixel ultra-wide at 122 degrees.
Recording supports ARRI LogC3 at ten-bit depth, with dynamic range reaching fourteen stops. The format itself comes from a partnership with the cinema company ARRI.
“YOYO” mode
The mode that drives the arm is called YOYO Robot Mode, offering AI subject tracking with automatic camera movement, sound source localisation, gesture recognition for touch-free control, and cinematic motion modes such as tilt lock and a bird’s-eye perspective.
The rest of the specification
A Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor. A silicon-carbon battery of 7,060mAh, with 120W wired and 50W wireless charging. A 6.31-inch LTPO OLED screen peaking at 6,800 nits, with 4,320Hz dimming.
Price: in yuan only
The announced prices are Chinese: 9,999 yuan for 12GB with 512GB, and 12,999 yuan for 16GB with 1TB. Pre-orders opened on announcement day, and sales began on 18 August.
Honor has announced no price and no date for Kuwait or the Gulf. Anyone who wants one today is looking at importing it, with everything that implies about a warranty no local agent covers.
The company’s chief executive James Li said at the announcement that “hardware lays the foundation for image quality, and algorithms deliver the leap”, and that “technology is only the base; what finally decides a great photograph is taste”.
Photo: a phone with a mechanical gimbal beside a professional camera, from Honor press materials.
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