Honor has launched the Robot Phone, a flagship Android smartphone built around a four-degree-of-freedom motorized gimbal camera developed in partnership with German company ARRI. The device went on sale in China on August 18, 2026, and is the first commercial product of what the two companies call their Cinematic Imaging Partnership, announced at MWC 2026 in Barcelona. It is also the first device outside of ARRI’s own camera line to carry the “co-engineered with ARRI” designation.

The main camera — a 200-megapixel unit with a Type 1/1.28 sensor and an f/1.6 aperture — sits on the Titanium Agile Gimbal, a motorized arm that deploys from a recess in the rear of the chassis, rotates a full 360 degrees, and stabilizes the camera on three axes mechanically rather than relying on electronic cropping. Six movement modes are available, including AI SpinShot, Tilt Locked, Super Steady, and FPV, alongside a gesture-triggered deployment mode for hands-free operation. AI subject tracking with auto-framing runs continuously during video recording and livestreaming. The mechanism adds weight: at 248 grams, the Robot Phone is considerably heavier than most flagship smartphones. The rear system is completed by a 200-megapixel periscope telephoto on a Type 1/1.4 sensor with 2.7x optical zoom and an f/2.6 aperture, and a 50-megapixel ultra-wide covering a 122-degree field of view.

For still photography, the main gimbal camera’s 200-megapixel resolution allows aggressive cropping without significant loss of detail. The gimbal stabilization applies to stills as well as video, reducing camera shake at both wide and telephoto focal lengths. An automatic panorama mode uses the gimbal’s rotation to capture and stitch nine frames into a single wide image without manual panning. ARRI Looks — Honor’s term for licensed ARRI color presets — can also be applied to still captures, carrying a consistent color treatment across both photography and video workflows.

The ARRI contribution is a licensed color and workflow package: the phone records 10-bit LogC3 in ARRI Wide Gamut 3 — the encoding used in the pre-ALEXA 35 generation — with a selection of ARRI Looks applicable on-screen during capture. Honor claims 14-bit 4:4:4 internal processing, 14 stops of dynamic range, and an 8dB signal-to-noise improvement through AI noise reduction, figures that ARRI’s own press materials do not corroborate. Video recording reaches 4K at 120fps, or 4K at 60fps in LogC3.