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Pocket gimbals have become increasingly popular among content creators, with products like the DJI Osmo Pocket 4P and Insta360 Luna Ultra offering stabilized cameras in remarkably small packages. Honor is taking a different approach by putting the gimbal directly inside the smartphone.
The new Honor Robot Phone features a built-in 3-axis mechanical gimbal that allows its main camera to physically move. The smartphone also combines AI-powered camera controls with imaging technology developed in partnership with ARRI, giving it some serious ambitions as a content creation tool.
A Gimbal Built Into the Phone
The highlight of the Robot Phone is its 4DoF mechanical gimbal, which uses Honor’s Titanium Agile Gimbal technology.
Honor says the system contains more than 100 precision components and is covered by more than 100 patents. The company has also reduced the size of the gimbal by 65% compared with conventional designs while increasing structural strength by 200%.
Rather than relying entirely on electronic stabilization, the gimbal physically moves the main camera to stabilize footage. Its titanium motor can rotate up to 360 degrees, allowing the camera to quickly change direction while maintaining stabilization.
The system has six camera movement modes, including AI SpinShot, Tilt Locked, Super Steady, FPV and FPV Vertical. It can also track subjects and automatically adjust the camera to maintain the desired composition.
AI Can Control the Camera
Honor is also using AI to make the gimbal more useful when shooting without a dedicated camera operator.
In YOYO Robot Mode, users can control the camera using voice commands and hand gestures. AI-powered tracking can automatically pan and tilt the camera to keep a person in frame, which could be particularly useful for vlogging, livestreaming and video calls.
The voice controls go beyond simply starting or stopping a recording. Users can tell the phone to move the camera left by a specific angle, point toward the sky or rotate for a certain amount of time.
That gives the Robot Phone some of the functionality of an autonomous camera operator without requiring a separate gimbal or tracking system.
ARRI Brings Cinema Technology to the Phone
Honor has also partnered with ARRI, bringing the company’s imaging technology and professional video workflow to the Robot Phone.
The main camera can record 10-bit ARRI LogC3 video and supports ARRI Wide Gamut 3 and ARRI Looks. Honor says the phone processes images in 14-bit 4:4:4 before outputting 10-bit LogC3 and 4:2:2 video.
The company claims up to 14 stops of dynamic range and an 8dB improvement in video signal-to-noise ratio through AI-powered noise reduction.
ARRI LUTs can also be applied during post-production, giving filmmakers a workflow that is closer to what they would expect from dedicated video cameras.
Three High-Resolution Cameras
The Robot Phone’s main camera is a 200-megapixel Agile Gimbal Camera with a 1/1.28-inch sensor and an f/1.6 aperture. That’s smaller than the 1-inch sensor used by the DJI Osmo Pocket 4P, but the sensor is still relatively large for a smartphone and benefits from the mechanical stabilization provided by the gimbal.
The main camera is joined by another 200-megapixel periscope telephoto camera with a 1/1.4-inch sensor and 2.7x optical zoom. A 50-megapixel ultrawide camera with a 122-degree field of view completes the camera system.
The phone is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Mobile Platform and Honor’s H1 imaging chip. It also has a large 7,060mAh battery with support for 120W wired and 50W wireless charging. Storage configurations include 12GB of RAM with 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM with 1TB of storage.
A High-End Display
The Robot Phone has a 6.31-inch LTPO OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and peak brightness of 6,800 nits. The display also supports 4,320Hz PWM dimming and is protected by Honor’s NanoCrystal Shield.
The combination of a high-refresh-rate display, large battery and flagship processor makes it a fairly conventional high-end smartphone in many respects. It’s the camera system that makes the Robot Phone stand out.
Pricing and Availability
The Honor Robot Phone is currently available only in China, and the company has not yet announced official pricing. Earlier leaks suggested a starting price of around 7,999 yuan, with the highest-end configuration potentially reaching 15,999 yuan.
For now, the Robot Phone remains an unusual alternative to carrying both a smartphone and a pocket gimbal. If Honor can make the mechanical gimbal, AI tracking and ARRI video features work as well in practice as they do on paper, it could offer content creators a genuinely different way to shoot with a smartphone.
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