Honor Robot Phone shows what's possible with a camera on a smart robotic arm
While the Honor Magic 8 Pro received a camera downgrade, the Chinese company also unveiled new ideas for smartphone cameras at its new flagship's launch event. To be more exact, the Honor Robot Phone is a concept smartphone that put the main camera on a robotic arm that can fold up and hide inside the very thick camera bump.
The arm unfolds at the push of a button and offers a whole range of useful features. First and foremost, the main camera can be used as a selfie camera. This can be handy, since main cameras generally takes significantly better photos and videos than front cameras. Furthermore, the arm acts as a gimbal, which should stabilize videos much more effectively than conventional lens-based or sensor-based image stabilization.
This robotic arm should also open up entirely new possibilities. Combined with the corresponding software, users should be able to automatically point the camera at the stars and move it along with them. This allows the camera to capture stars sharply, even with very long exposure times.
In the video embedded below, Honor also illustrates how the arm automatically points the camera at an object, so it can be used like a smart action camera when the smartphone is carried in a chest pocket, for instance. It is unclear if the Honor Robot Phone or a comparable smartphone will ever hit the market. For now, this is just a concept, and Honor plans to provide further details on the Robot Phone at the Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona.
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