Honor is making a phone with a flip-out camera on a robotic arm

Most modern smartphones are basically rectangles with a touchscreen on the front and a couple of cameras on the back. Every now and then a phone maker gets the bright idea if introducing a flip-out camera that lets the rear camera face forward so that you don’t even need a standalone selfie camera.

The upcoming Honor Robot Phone takes that idea to its illogical extreme. It’s a phone with a flip-out camera on a robotic arm that lets the camera rotate so that it’s not fixed in one or two positions.

Honor hasn’t provided detailed specs, pricing, or availability information yet. But the company has shared a promo video that’s nearly 3 minutes long, showing how the phone could be used in different situations, and CNBC reports that the Chinese phone maker will share more details at MWC 2026 in Beijing next year, which means the phone probably won’t hit the streets until some time after that.

Based on the video, it looks like the camera module will be able to change angles to get the perfect shot or keep a person or object in the frame. It will most likely offer gimbal-like image stabilization, but the video also hints at the idea of AI features that could go beyond object recognition and possibly include giving the camera a “personality” by allowing it to move in ways that suggest it’s interacting with the user. In one scene it even plays peek-a-boo with a baby. That might just be artistic license for the promo video rather than a promise of features to come though.

At a time when most smartphones have basically the same design, it’s nice to see a company trying something different. I’m not sure that this is the kind of different we need, but at least it is different.

via Engadget and /r/Android