I step out into in the late afternoon heat, phone in hand and ready to film, as mopeds swarm the sidewalk around me, barely avoiding my outstretched arm. I tap a button in the camera app and a 6mm-thin gimbal-mounted camera swings out of the phone’s back. On the screen I see a scene as hectic as the one in front of my eyes — with one major difference.
A gauzy filmic light envelops the Shenzhen cityscape, courtesy of Honor’s new Robot Phone. This unconventional device, which went on sale last week in China, is designed to shoot differently than any phone you might’ve seen before.
Most obviously, there’s that pop-up gimbal, which makes the phone resemble the DJI Osmo Pocket camera. More significantly, the entire camera system has been designed together with Arri, the century-old German maker of high-end cinematography equipment, beloved by <a href="https://cinemamix360.com/2026/08/21/nord-stream-bombing-suspect-to-hollywood-fixer-who-is-volodymyr-zhuravlev/” title=”Nord Stream bombing suspect to Hollywood fixer: Who is Volodymyr Zhuravlev?”>Hollywood filmmakers.
This partnership is Honor’s answer to Oppo’s joint endeavor with Hasselblad and Xiaomi’s collaboration with Leica. The combination of Chinese phones and European imaging technology has proved massively successful for both of Honor’s rivals, which boast perhaps the most impressive smartphone cameras available right now. It’s a shame this phone isn’t available in Europe, while Honor’s phones remain unavailable in the US.
Rather than opt for a photography alliance, Honor has shrewdly sought out perhaps the most impressive name in video — playing into a trend while also setting itself apart. It especially makes sense for a device like the Robot Phone, which is likely to be enjoyed by vloggers and content creators.
The next product the two companies will collaborate on in their multiyear partnership is Honor’s upcoming flagship, the Magic 9 Pro, which will debut later this year. From there, Honor will evaluate which devices will incorporate Arri technology based on their processing power, image sensor and other optical components.
There will likely be another Robot Phone, too — hopefully one that’ll be available internationally.
“We have plans for the next [version],” says Honor’s president of hardware engineering, Yang Liu. It might not be alone in the market. According to Liu, some of the company’s competitors have already been in contact with Honor’s suppliers in the Shenzhen area since the phone’s launch. “It’s a small world here,” he says.
The art of miniaturization
In an intimate briefing with a handful of reporters, Liu and Arri’s chief product officer, David Bermbach, explain how the partnership between their companies first came about.
Honor began developing the concept for the Robot Phone in 2023, before showing it to Arri in 2025. By then, it had cooked up a prototype that Honor employees took to Huaqiangbei, the world’s largest electronics market, in downtown Shenzhen. They asked manufacturers there if they could replicate the hardware — motor, gimbal and all. The answer: impossible.
That originality is exactly what Arri liked about the Robot Phone. “We were very curious,” says Bermbach. “It’s bold, it’s scary, but it’s good.”
Arri is known for its cinema cameras, which are several kilos heavier than the average smartphone. I was curious about how Arri worked with Honor to miniaturize its technology to work inside the body of a smartphone.
“It’s a very different beast,” says Bermbach. “It’s a challenge, but also an opportunity, because mass-produced devices have much more functionality on a smaller scale than special devices for one industry where we sell a few thousand.”
Arri is hoping the partnership will mean more access to its technology for content creators and up-and-coming filmmakers. It wants to make the barrier to entry as low as possible to provide access to people with talent and ideas.
The engineering challenge for Arri was to analyze all the little “Lego pieces” in the phone and work out how to use them to rebuild as much of its internal hardware and software pipeline as possible The high processing power of Honor phones really helped, and the two teams have worked together to achieve what Arri believes is good photo quality, both technically and artistically
In spite of all the technical progress made in creating the Robot Phone, it’s not realistic to rebuild an entire cinema camera within those tight confines.
One trade-off is that there’s no option to film at 120 frames per second when the camera is switched to Arri mode, which is a notch above normal video mode. There are ways they could have made the camera shoot faster, says Bermbach, but that would have required a compromise in quality.
My time using the Robot Phone
I’m not a professional videographer, and I was only able to spend a short time testing the Robot Phone. Some of the features are beyond my current skill set — for example, filming in Log. This format, which allows you to take full advantage of the camera’s dynamic range, will be appreciated by pros, but in all honesty, isn’t something I have much experience with.
Instead, I come to the Robot Phone in much the same way most people will: as an enthusiastic amateur who has high hopes of making my footage look more cinematic. I wander down a Shenzhen street with the gimbal out and the camera app switched to Arri mode, which activates the custom-built shooting software.
There’s a steep learning curve, especially as I’m playing with the gimbal at the same time, but one feature is particularly accessible. Every scene looks more impressive with the built-in filters, which in photography speak are known as LUTs (or look-up tables).
The 10 or so LUTs on the Robot Phone are classic cinematic looks based on Arri’s in-depth understanding of color science. I particularly love the “Nostalgic” LUT, which gives the footage a warm, retro, bluish tint.
Easier for me to get to grips with is the gimbal. An on-screen joystick allows me to control it manually, but I also enjoy playing with the subject-tracking. This works best when it locks onto faces, but at dinner I use it to create a tracking shot of a teapot as it spins by on the lazy susan.
Many phone-makers have made amazing progress with image stabilization, but a gimbal offers a level that a phone simply can’t compete with. “Everything you can do optically is just that little bit better,” says Bermbach.
“Pixels are very precious to us,” he adds, meaning it’s better to work with what the sensors capture directly than to lean on software tricks that might degrade the quality.
Developing the gimbal was tricky because it needed to be both very small and very strong, says Liu. Nothing like it existed that would be durable enough to put into a smartphone, so Honor tackled the engineering challenge itself.
It built upon the knowledge it acquired while building one of the world’s slimmest foldable phone — the Honor Magic V6 — and making sure it was tough enough to survive the inevitable knocks. Likewise, the compact battery technology Honor has developed for its foldable means it’s confident about the Robot Phone’s ability to last.
One thing Liu especially loves about the gimbal is that it brings the quality of the rear camera to the front-facing camera by allowing you to flip it at the touch of a button. Again, I’m not a content creator, but I really enjoyed walking along and talking to the camera while flipping back and forth between my own face and the street view in front of me.
Both the Honor and Arri teams are excited to see how people will use the Robot Phone. This first generation is being sold to serve the needs of livestreamers and vloggers in China, but they fully expect people to come up with use cases they haven’t yet envisaged themselves.
I’m already excited for the prospect of the next generation of the phone heading to regions beyond China, and to see how the partnership will evolve by the time the Honor Magic 9 Pro arrives later this year. I’d love to see Honor and Arri find a way to tap further into the color science and LUTs to build out the phone’s skills in still photography.
But for now, we’ll have to see what people with better video skills than me are able to achieve with the first Robot Phone.
“We know that in our industry,” Bermbach says, “people will play with it, people will use it, people will make completely new things with it.”
Editors’ note: Katie Collins’ travel costs for the Honor event were covered by Honor. The judgments and opinions of CNET are our own.
