The hit gimbal camera: is this what future Samsung, Apple phones look like?

Honor makes some seriously good smartphones, but I bet many of your US (and to some extent—EU) friends have never heard of the brand.

Which is ironic, since it's up to Honor (and Vivo, Oppo, Huawei, Xiaomi and the rest of the Far East gang) to push the envelope in terms of innovation.

While some Samsung companies are guilty of installing 5,000 mAh battery cells for seven straight years in their most important flagships—or some Apple companies are guilty of waiting almost a decade before joining the foldable race, brands like Honor don't sleep.

They come up with crazy-looking (in a good way) devices and funky design ideas… which are paying off. Honor's brand-new Robot Phone is selling like hotcakes.

Sold out!

The most recent reports about the Honor Robot Phone state that this extravagant handset has indeed sold out in China. Dubbed as the first "robot phone" because of its gimbal camera that tucks in its rear panel (only to pop up when you need it), it starts at 9,999 yuan, which is about $1,500 when directly converted.

It sold out "instantly" and it'll be available again on August 25, which is next week.

Now, it's safe to say that there were only limited quantities of the Robot Phone initially, so the "sold out" situation is easy to explain. Nevertheless, it's fascinating—and an interesting sign—that so many people have voted with their wallets in favor of this odd-looking and premium-priced phone.

It's a flagship, though

The Robot Phone by Honor may seem like some crazy prototype meant only for mobile forums and expos around the world, but it's not.

It's a fully functional handset that just looks nothing like what you're used to.

Honor is making the Robot Phone stand out with a camera system unlike anything found on a typical smartphone. Its main camera sits on a motorized titanium-alloy gimbal. Built-in motors let the camera rotate, follow subjects and adjust its position automatically. Honor says the mechanism has gone through extensive durability testing and will be covered by a replacement service.

Honor is on the move:

• Honor’s Back to School deals are intense: laptops, foldable Magic V6, flagship Magic 8 Pro, and more!
• The 10,000-nit display phone is real! Meet the Honor X80 Pro Max
• Honor Watch 6 arrives with a promise of 35-day battery life and over 120 sports modes

The camera setup

The phone also packs serious camera hardware: a 200 MP gimbal main camera, a 50 MP ultra-wide and a 200 MP periscope telephoto camera. Honor's image chip handles image processing, while a partnership with ARRI brings features such as LogC3 video recording aimed at more serious video creators.

There's a 6.3-inch LTPO display with a 2640 x 1216 resolution, a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, a huge 7,060mAh battery and 120W wired charging. In other words, the unusual camera doesn't come at the expense of flagship-level specs.

The software is just as unusual. Agentic OS serves as the foundation, while the new YOYO Pro mode can understand lengthy commands and carry out more than 100 actions automatically. The phone can also recognize the user's mood, habits and surroundings, with additional abilities available through its Skill Store.

The Robot Phone weighs 248 grams and is 9.59 mm thick.

I'm betting on foldables

So, if Honor's Robot Phone is so popular, won't that force Samsung and Apple to exploit this design, too? Unfortunately, I don't think so. The big brands are too conservative.

My crystal ball says that it's not funky gimbal designs that will conquer people in the foreseeable future, but foldables.

Slab phones have plateaued and the element of surprise is mostly gone. Sure, there are some jaw-dropping 10,000 mAh battery breakthroughs that we've been enjoying ("we" in China, not "we" in the US, though) in the past 12 months or so.

AI hasn't gone fully agentic as of time of writing. Maybe it'll happen tomorrow or maybe it won't. Point is, people are ready for something new, something radically different.

While Honor's Robot Phone seems nice, I'm not sure that it will take off globally in a way that'll compel Sammy or Cupertino to make a Robot Phone of their own. One innovation at a time—let them adopt 10,000 mAh silicon-carbon batteries and 1-inch camera sensors before diving in the deep.

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