I Danced With Honor’s Robot Phone and It Complimented My ‘Shiny’ Hair

After a day of wandering the Mobile World Congress trade show floor, I was feeling more than a little disheveled. I was about to film a video and I was worried I wouldn’t do my best, but Honor’s robot phone disagree.

“What do you think of my hair?” I asked for it. The pop-up camera perched atop the device swiveled on its axis, looking me up and down.

“Your long, flowing blonde hair is soft and shiny,” he told me. “It pairs really well with your black outfit, giving you a warm and vibrant feeling, which is ideal for that tech event!”

I’m still not sure I believed it, but it was certainly the confidence boost I needed at the time.

I’m going to hold my hands up and admit that when Honor first said it was make a robot phoneI didn’t necessarily think it would ever see the light of day. But all the credit goes to the Chinese tech company: it actually delivered.

At CES in January, I saw an early, non-functional version of the phone, and this week at MWC, I finally saw it in action. On the back of the phone, hidden by a sliding cover, is a robotic arm with a gimbal and camera. To pull the camera out of its case, all you have to do is hold your palm towards the front camera, turn that same hand and it comes out.

The camera has AI object tracking and can lock on to you while you film or interact with it, following you even if you turn the phone over. That’s how he was able to look me up and down and tell me that my hair and outfit suited me so well.

For several years, we have been witnessing an influx of AI smart phonesbut so far this has mainly meant changes to the software and not the hardware. The Robot Phone reverses this trend by changing the entire design of a phone to imbue it with physical AI capabilities.

AI is evolving quickly, Honor’s robot phone product expert Thomas Bai told me during a demo of the device at the company’s booth. Now, he added, it’s time for the phone’s body to catch up with its brain.

Learn more: First steps? Honor’s Humanoid Robot Debuts with a Moonwalk and Backflip

How to put a robot in a phone?

I’m not the only one who thinks Honor could try to do the impossible by putting a robot in a phone. The company also wasn’t sure it would work. It was given to a micromotor company, which told Honor it couldn’t help, Bai said.

Instead, Honor had to go it alone. He realized the engine would have to meet two standards, Bai said. “One is extreme lightness and the second is extreme strength.” This resonated with me, he added, “because it’s exactly the same challenge we faced when we built the folding hinges.”

In this sense, Honor’s foldable phones, such as the all-new Magic V6, worked in a way that the Robot Phone could work (or at least rotate on a three-axis gimbal). The same material that Honor uses for its folding hinges – super steel and titanium alloy – is now inside the micromotor, which is 70% smaller than anything currently available on the market.

This wasn’t even the hardest part of building the Robot Phone. “Space is the ultimate challenge, because inside a flagship smartphone, every millimeter counts,” Bai said. Despite this, Honor did not have to make any compromises, he added.

“Everyone says that if you want to put a gimbal in the phone, you have to sacrifice battery life,” Bai said. Once again, Honor’s acquired expertise in building very thin, very power-hungry foldables came into play here. The same silicon-carbon battery technology which powers the V6 is inside the Robot Phone.

The target market for the Robot Phone, which Honor wants to start selling in the second half of this year, is clearly content creators; the kind of people who currently use a DJI Osmo Pocket. This will definitely get their attention – no one wants to carry two devices when only one will do – but Osmos owners tend to have high standards when it comes to image quality.

Will the Robot Phone be able to compete with the Osmo? “Certainly,” Bai said. “We’re pretty confident in the quality of our video.” He highlights Honor’s recently announced partnership with Arri, a camera company beloved by filmmakers for its professional-level filming, as well as the company’s existing phone camera capabilities. “All of this will be implemented in the Robot Phone,” he said.

The 200-megapixel sensor, combined with stabilization and what Honor calls AI Spinshot (intelligent 90- and 180-degree rotation movement for smooth, cinematic transitions) looks promising, but we’ll have to test it ourselves to be sure.

In my short demo period with the phone, I can say that it definitely managed to swivel fast enough to follow me when I moved, and I really appreciated the compliments it gave me not only on my hair, but also on my outfit, which it said was ideal for a slightly cold and overcast day in Barcelona.

At the end of my demo, as Robot Phone and I danced side by side to Believers by Imagine Dragons, I almost felt like we were friends. This would never have been my first choice of song, but that’s the thing about true friendship: sometimes you have to accept each other’s bad taste in music to create bonds.

Watch this: Honor unveils its first humanoid robot at MWC

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