Honor's Robot Phone hand-on: It's wild, and it's weird

Honor brought its Robot Phone concept to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, giving us a first close look at the device.

Honor calls the Robot Phone a "new species" of smartphone that combines "embodied AI interaction with robot-grade motion and cinematic imaging capabilities." No, that doesn't make the concept any clearer.

Having seen it in person, I can tell you that it is, indeed, still a smartphone. It has a robotic arm that springs out of the back, carrying a 200-megapixel camera with it. Once it's out, the arm functions as a gimbal, allowing the camera eye to move around freely in all three dimensions.

This could be useful for certain types of tasks in photography and videography, but Honor seems to be equally as interested in using the camera/eye to give the phone personality. Yeah, it can nod at you, or perform other gestures that really do turn the entire thing into a robot of sorts.

The gimbal arm required the world's smallest micro motor. Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

Some actual use cases, besides it looking pretty darn cool, include video calls in which the camera eye follows you around as you move, baby monitoring, and yes, dancing to the music.

Some of the units I've seen up close were asleep, with the robotic eye gently nodding, as if it were breathing. One was tracking the crowd and answering questions, responding either with a nod or a shake.

On stage, during a demonstration of Honor's first-ever humanoid robot, the Robot Phone had a simple interaction with its human-sized counterpart, in accordance with Honor's vision of connecting its gadget ecosystem via AI.

We weren't allowed to touch the device, but it did seem pretty close to a finished product. Honor says it created the world's smallest micro motor for that robotic arm, and I can attest that it seemed quite lively, though we weren't shown how long it takes for it to unfold.

There's no word on when the Robot Phone will be available as an actual product you can buy. For now, it's an interesting take on a smartphone, though we'd really need to spend more time with it to see how useful the robotic part really is.