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It's bizarre to think that, on the same day Honor announced its most ambitious foldable phone yet, I was drawn to a different device.
At Mobile World Congress, the Chinese electronics maker reintroduced its Robot Phone, first unveiled at CES in January, this time on the Barcelona show floor with working features to please the crowd.
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It was apparent from the oohs and ahhs of the weekend audience that this pocketable robot may be even more appealing than the back-flipping humanoid ones that brands continue to pitch as slow-paced housekeepers and pet sitters. It certainly was for me.
That's because the Honor Robot Phone is built with more practicality than I expected, though some features may raise more privacy and security concerns than anything else. Let's break it all down.
A familiar gimmick
The Robot Phone's highlight is its gimbal-stabilized camera that pops out from the back of the device. Perhaps I'm more of a believer in such a feature because I've long been using gimbal-stabilized webcams for work meetings. They're ideal for keeping subjects in frame, recordings steady, and portable in size.
Integrating one into a phone offers those same benefits, but can now be leveraged for more powerful use cases like recording 4K videos with the 200MP sensor and capturing smooth-panning panoramic shots (though limited to 90° and 180°, according to Honor).
Some folks may be more charmed by the multimodal AI capabilities the gimbal camera provides, such as providing real-time wardrobe suggestions or solutions — correct and accurate ones, hopefully — to general problems. I'm sure we're all familiar with the “how to fix my bike tire” example by now.
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To give the Robot Phone more personality, Honor's playfully developed software makes the camera nod, shake its head, and even dance when interacted with. Watching the introduction video for the Robot Phone reminded me of the whimsical qualities we now attribute to robots like WALL-E and R2-D2.
When not in operation, the camera can tuck itself compactly into the back cover, thanks to the micro motor that powers it. This is important, as physically hiding the camera is the only way to guarantee that it's not recording anything without you knowing. An LED indicator is simply not enough in this day and age.
What comes next?
Honor hasn't shared much about the “phone” part of Robot Phone, but the company has confirmed that the device will launch in China in the second half of this year, first before anything else. That's what the company has done with its traditional phone releases, so it's not a surprising market strategy.
It remains to be seen how a phone with a motorized, ‘dancing' neck survives the reality of clumsy hands, lint-filled pockets, and the thousand tiny accidents of daily life. Honor is betting on a new kind of smartphone — now we'll see if it's tough enough to survive the wild.
