Honor first teased its “robot phone” with a movable camera arm earlier this year. Ahead of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the company has now provided more details. This includes how the robotic system can respond to different situations without direct commands. Honor plans to launch the device in the second half of this year.
The company says the robot has a personality and can respond with head shakes or even dance to the beat of music. Users can interact with the assistant through both text and voice. In a demonstration, the robot nodded or shook its head to suggest outfits in response to a user’s apparel request.
The phone features a 200-megapixel camera mounted on a moving three-axis gimbal with stabilization technology. This allows the camera to smoothly rotate and capture steady videos and photos. A Super Steady mode is available for video, and a SpinShot feature enables cinematic shots by rotating the camera by 90 or 180 degrees.
The robotic camera also aims to make video calls more fluid by using AI-powered object tracking to follow the user. This technology is a more advanced take on features like Apple’s Center Stage.
Honor developed its own micro motor to control the camera’s movements. It applied techniques from foldable phone hinges to make the camera sturdy and to fit a four-degree-of-freedom gimbal system into a phone body. The robotic arm uses the same materials as the hinge in the Honor Magic V6, boasting a tensile strength of 2800 MPa.
At the same event, Honor also released the Honor Magic V6 foldable with a 6,600 mAh battery, the Honor MagicPad 4 tablet, and the Honor MagicBook 14 laptop.