Unique Robot Phone camera lays foundation for Honor's future phones
Big sensor, custom imaging chip and partnership with ARRI detailed
by Chris Hall · T3
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Quick summary
The camera system in Honor's Robot Phone has been detailed, revealing the specs of the main camera.
The partnership with ARRI will bring advanced cinema features to the camera to take advantage of that gimbal.
Honor has been showing off the Robot Phone since it was first revealed in October 2025 and now the company has staged a press conference to talk about the camera. That details the partnership with ARRI, while also fleshing out some of the specifics.
The Robot Phone's unique feature is that is has a camera attached to a gimbal that lives within the device itself. This opens up a full range of features and possibilities that other phones can't manage.
Firstly, it's a really advanced platform for the camera that it contains, and secondly, it allows the camera to behave like an interactive robot. Not only can it track the subject you're recording, but it can follow you around the room and react to what you're doing.
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Thanks to ITHome sharing the conference held in China, we now know that the main camera has a 200-megapixel sensor, with a 1/1.28in type sensor, with the lens offering an f/1.6 aperture and a 23mm focal length.
That sensor is large for a smartphone - not quite as large as you'll find in the Xiaomi 15 Ultra or Oppo Find X9 Ultra - but it's still a big sensor with a wide aperture.
There's another 200-megapixel sensor powering the periscope-style telephoto camera, while there's a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera too.
Core to the photography experience is the new Honor Yuguang H1 image signal processing chip, said to be developed in house and promising low noise, real-time RAW image processing and power efficiency.
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We'd already had confirmation that Honor was working with ARRI - the German cinematic camera company - and that's going to bring that heritage to video capture, something the Robot Phone is poised to revolutionise.
That's going to include ARRI Log-C encoding and LUT colour grading, along with advanced controls to give Robot Phone owners options to put that gimbal to good use. We've already seen advanced stabilisation and AI-powered subject tracking in action.
But how does this relate to future phones from Honor? It's thought that the camera system will feed into the Honor Magic 9 series. While those devices aren't expected to benefit from the Robot Phone's gimbal, the generation of 100 patents for the technology in the phone - as well as the new ISP chip - should benefit future smartphones from the company.
The Honor Robot Phone will be announced on 12 August in China.