Honor's Robot Phone stands out as probably the most preposterously-named device doing the rounds at this year's MWC, but it seemingly is slowly but surely stepping towards being a real product. Honor announced at the show that it'll actually be available to buy this year, albeit without any more details than that it would be in the second half of 2026.
It followed that relative bombshell up with far clearer demos and showcases of the phone's capabilities than it's offered up at previous shows and announcements, and at its stand on the showfloor, I got an extended demo of what the Robot Phone is like to interact with.
This included waking its robotic functionality with a simple but quite particular wave of my hand, starting up its AI and effectively beginning a conversation much like you would with Gemini or another chatbot.
Crucially, though, the Robot Phone has that all-important gimbal arm and camera to swivel out from its back and prop up above the phone. This gives it the ability to watch you in a more active way than using a simple selfie camera, and one interesting choice is that Honor's having it also emote a little thorugh movement.
In one demonstration, the gimbal arm shook itself to answer negatively, or nodded a little to show a positive respons. At other points, when playing music out of the phone, it could be instructed to dance along, responding to the tempo of your track with wiggles and twirls fairly accurately.
It was also able to do the sort of quick visual assessments that chatbots have become so popular for in recent months. A quick look at my outfit, for instance, had it affirming that it was a "perfect choice" for a tech show (always nice to hear, albeit flattery does seem to be the default mode).
Of course, my view would be that you need to strip away these AI features in your head and concentrate on the actual utility that the Robot Phone brings to the table. Sure, it can dance to music, but who'll really use that feature regularly? By contrast, its gimbal offers some tangible features.
For one, I watched a demo where an Honor employee jogged lightly on a treadmill while filming video, and the gimbal's automatic subject-tracking and motorised stabilisation meant the results were buttery smooth compared to most phone cameras.
The phone looked right from the start like it was basically a DJI Osmo camera mounted on a phone, after all, so getting some of the benefits of a stabilised action camera is very much one of the main reasons to be interested in it.
That also brings me to the undeniably impressive core of the Robot Phone – it's one heck of a proof of Honor's R&D department. The miniaturised motors in the gimbal are custom-made and absurdly tiny, and the mechanical nature of the way it can swivel back away to hide in a nook on the phone's back is undeniably neat.
However, that reliance on mechanical components and moving parts also has to leave one wondering how durable the phone will be, which brings us to some more practical questions. Can this sort of phone have a remotely decent IP rating for water and dust resistance, for instance?
Along similar lines, while Honor has remarkably confirmed that the Robot Phone will be available in the second half of 2026, how many units will be made? What will each phone cost a customer to buy, and will they be available outside of China? Does Honor actually expect to make any money from the phone or potential successors, or is this more of a proof of concept and capabilities?
These are all questions that won't get answers for a good while yet – Honor's likely to now sit back and reflect on an MWC show where it was able to stay on the front foot. Having got some proper demo time with the Robot Phone, though, I'm extremely curious to find out more about how it's actually going to hit the market.
