The Robot Phone may be the product that has put Honor CEO James Li under the most pressure since he took office.
At the August 12 launch event, the camera module on the back of Honor’s Robot Phone slowly rose from the device and moved to the music. It locked onto a subject and turned as the person moved, resembling a small robot head emerging from the phone. Honor had turned a normally fixed smartphone camera into a moving module.
Starting at RMB 9,999 (USD 1,482.2) the Robot Phone is the first new form factor launched under the Honor Alpha Plan. It is both a premium flagship pushing into the RMB 10,000 price tier and a showcase for Honor’s vision of the artificial intelligence phone.
In a smartphone market that has offered few major changes in form factor, the product stands out. But developing it involved repeated setbacks.
Over the past year, memory costs have risen while the global smartphone market has contracted by more than 10%. Accordingly, Honor was also looking for a second growth engine, a major new product, and a stronger position in the market.
“If I had to describe Honor’s current state with a picture, I would say it is like an eagle preparing to take flight, only to run into a violent storm. We are at a critical stage of breaking through against the tide and being reborn through the storm,” Li told 36Kr.
Honor executives were themselves nervous about the Robot Phone project. But the company decided to carry it through.
The engineering challenge was substantial. A smartphone already has to accommodate chips, batteries, camera modules, and thermal management systems. The Robot Phone also had to fit a mechanical system comprising more than 100 precision components while keeping the device within a nine-millimeter body and a weight of 248 grams.
Honor went through more than a dozen iterations of its industrial design and internal architecture over more than six months. It introduced materials and engineering solutions including titanium alloy and its proprietary “Honor Super Steel,” eventually reducing the motor assembly to 2.6 grams.
Making the gimbal smaller and lighter was only part of the challenge. It also had to last.
The Robot Phone has 68 wires running between the gimbal and motherboard, including 19 coaxial cables. Those wires have to fit inside the limited space of the phone while withstanding repeated lifting, lowering, and rotation of the gimbal. Because the Robot Phone is designed for everyday use, it must also pass the drop and tumble tests expected of smartphones, adding another layer of difficulty compared with standalone handheld gimbals.
A more serious problem emerged one or two months before launch.
Fei Fang, president of Honor’s product line, told 36Kr that the team discovered the flip mechanism had a designed service life of only about one year, well short of what it expected from a smartphone.
“We were under tremendous pressure. Even a month before launch, our executives were still asking how it was coming along,” Li said. “Our AI capabilities, imaging capabilities, and design standards all came together in the Robot Phone.”
In one week, Honor tested 18 material solutions while coordinating teams across materials, manufacturing, modules, device engineering, R&D, procurement, supply, and delivery. It ultimately extended the mechanism’s designed service life to five years.
The result is a product Honor is positioning between a conventional smartphone and a standalone gimbal camera.
For imaging, Honor partnered with German filmmaking equipment maker ARRI to introduce professional features including the ARRI LogC3 curve, false color monitoring, and focus peaking.
For AI, Honor worked closely with Alibaba’s Qwen large language model. The Robot Phone also features a system level agent architecture designed to combine visual, audio, and gesture inputs, understand users and their surroundings, and then plan and execute tasks.
Li believes the next generation of smartphones will shift from being containers for apps to platforms for AI agents. In that view, AI will no longer be confined to a chat box, but will increasingly respond to users and the physical world around them.
Launching a structurally complex and capital intensive product in an unproven category was not an easy choice. Still, Honor said preorders exceeded 400,000 units, while the phone sold out across its e-commerce channels within one minute of going on sale.
Li also said the upcoming Magic 9 flagship phone, scheduled to launch on September 28, will incorporate AI, imaging, and computing technologies developed through the Robot Phone. He described it as a major upgrade for the Magic series.
“Preconceptions are the biggest thing to fear,” Li said. “I hope everyone can cast aside their old impressions of Honor and turn a new page.”
The following transcript has been edited and consolidated for brevity and clarity.
36Kr: How would you describe Honor’s current stage of development?
James Li (JL): If I had to describe Honor’s current state with a picture, I would say it is like an eagle preparing to take flight, only to run into a violent storm. We are at a critical stage of breaking through against the tide and being reborn through the storm.
Two forces are converging right now.
One is downward pressure. Global memory supply is tight, the consumer electronics industry is under pressure, and the global smartphone market has contracted by more than 10%. At the same time, because of particular historical circumstances, Honor faces especially intense competitive pressure.
The other is an upward force. Since Honor began adjusting its strategy, technology, industry development, and the ecosystem have all been moving rapidly upward.
It is like a ship hit by two opposing forces. It starts to rock. Once it rocks, you get dizzy, and once you are dizzy, you lose track of where you are. But I think that is fine.
A company cannot become great without going through hardship. We are grateful for the pressure this era has brought from memory costs, and we are grateful for the competitive pressure. It will make Honor’s team stronger.
36Kr: If smartphone makers are going through such a difficult period, why did Honor choose to pursue a relatively forward-looking project such as the Robot Phone?
Fei Fang (FF): The Robot Phone originally came from our thinking about new forms of mobile imaging. As video recording became more common, we wanted to combine a gimbal with a smartphone.
The real challenge was this: how could we put a gimbal into a compact phone while still preserving a comfortable grip and portability?
Our team made more than a dozen rounds of adjustments to the industrial design and internal architecture. Just coordinating the industrial design with the architecture went through more than a dozen versions. We spent more than six months working through it.
Later, titanium alloy, Honor Super Steel, custom motors, and other solutions were introduced to address space, strength, and reliability.
There are dozens of cables inside the gimbal. It also has to support three-axis movement and time-of-flight sensing, so the structure is extremely complex.
But one or two months before launch, we discovered that the flip mechanism had a service life of only about one year.
So within one week, our team tested 18 material solutions and coordinated the materials, manufacturing, module, device, R&D, procurement, supply, and delivery teams to solve the problem together. We ultimately increased the designed service life to five years.
Actually, after we introduced the Honor Alpha Plan, we needed to redefine the direction of Honor’s smartphones. Between April and June last year, we decided to combine AI multimodality, embodied intelligence, and imaging, positioning Robot Phone as an embodied imaging phone.
At the time, several of us on the executive team were nervous about it.
But we believed uncertainty also represented opportunity. We needed to reach for something that we could only touch by jumping, rather than making something we could produce while lying down.
36Kr: With the global consumer electronics market under pressure, how do you view Honor’s performance during the first half of the year? How did its overseas and Chinese businesses perform respectively?
JL: In the first half of this year, Honor’s global unit sales grew 9% and revenue rose 11%, making it one of the fastest-growing Android brands.
Looking at China, we performed relatively well in the first quarter, but the second quarter was affected by price increases. Our market share is currently above 10%.
Those numbers may not sound particularly strong, but the Chinese market is stabilizing and recovering.
According to BCI data, Honor was the only manufacturer in China to post month-on-month growth in July. It recorded the largest gain in market share and returned to fourth place in the domestic market.
Looking overseas, Honor’s international unit sales grew 20% in the first half, while revenue rose 26%. Among the key overseas markets Honor has entered, its market share exceeds 10% in more than ten countries.
Let me share some figures.
Revenue in Latin America grew about 15%, including 67% growth in Mexico. Mexico is a very difficult market.
In the Middle East, we rank second in market share, behind only Samsung. In Saudi Arabia, our smartphones rank second and our tablets rank first.
In Southeast Asia, we rank first by market share in Malaysia, ahead of Apple and Samsung.
In Europe, we grew more than 60% in the first half, while our all-scenario business, including AIoT, grew 98%.
Overall, we are standing out overseas. Domestically, we are under pressure, but we are also recovering.
There has also been a structural change in Honor’s overseas growth. Our all-scenario and AIoT products grew 98%.
Our online overseas business used to be weak. Now it is growing by nearly 100%.
By price segment, because of rising memory costs, our smartphones in the USD 400–800 range grew 425%. In such a difficult first half, that segment still grew 4.2 times.
36Kr: Can you share your view of where AI phones are headed?
FF: The Robot Phone represents one of our explorations into the AI phone.
Our view is that smartphones used to be containers for apps. In the future, they will become a stage for AI agents. They will understand a person’s intent, help users plan, and complete tasks.
AI phones will also proactively provide services based on users’ habits and the situations they are in.
That will lead to changes in operating systems, service models, and application models.
AI also cannot remain only at the software level. It needs to be integrated with specific products.
For example, productivity AI can be used more extensively on large-screen devices. Imaging AI can help users shoot and create content. Gaming AI can be combined with high-performance smartphones to improve the experience.
But to make this possible, the key is to give devices long-term memory about the user and allow them to continuously understand changes in the user’s behavior.
At the same time, AI needs to run both locally on the phone and in the cloud. Local processing is faster and less expensive, while the cloud can handle more complex tasks.
I think these changes will not be limited to smartphones. PCs, tablets, glasses, and other wearable devices will all change, and entirely new product forms may also emerge.
In the past, interaction mainly relied on touchscreens. In the future, voice, gestures, and other forms of interaction will become increasingly common.
At the same time, there may eventually be a unified hub in the home that manages data, content, and computing resources across smartphones and other devices. That would allow services to continue seamlessly when users switch between devices.
What has not yet been fully solved is how devices and AI systems from different brands can work together.
36Kr: What technologies are shared between the Robot Phone, humanoid robots, and Honor’s other smartphone products?
JL: Humanoid robots and the Robot Phone do indeed share a technology stack in many areas.
Smartphones themselves have high reliability and strong communications capabilities, along with battery life requirements.
Very few people in the industry know that Honor can manufacture batteries for robots itself. We have actual battery production lines.
Some technologies used in humanoid robots, including autonomous control, motors, high-strength lightweight materials, and simulation technology, can also share a technology stack with smartphone platforms.
The multimedia interaction, imaging interaction, human-machine interaction, and voice interaction being developed for humanoid robots can also be used on smartphones.
This underlying technology platform is highly compatible with humanoid robots.
36Kr: Some competitors are developing standalone gimbal cameras. When Honor started the Robot Phone project, did you consider making it a standalone product? Why did it have to be integrated into a phone?
JL: When we were developing the Robot Phone, we genuinely did not consider making a standalone gimbal product because we wanted to find a form factor that could demonstrate both Honor’s imaging capabilities and its AI capabilities.
I have never viewed the Robot Phone as purely an imaging-focused smartphone.
We put tremendous effort into developing AI interaction with people, and this is only the beginning.
We want AI to step out of the screen. There is a lot more we can imagine from there.
Once we created this form factor, we knew we had to establish a benchmark.
We were under tremendous pressure. Even a month before launch, our executives were still asking how it was coming along.
Our AI capabilities, imaging capabilities, and design standards all came together in the Robot Phone.
36Kr: The Robot Phone brings together Honor’s innovations in AI, imaging, and hardware. How will Magic 9 build on the technologies explored through the Robot Phone?
JL: Magic 9’s AI capabilities will far exceed those of every other device maker.
At the same time, we are continuing to improve our AI and imaging capabilities, and Agentic OS will also make an entirely new attempt on the Magic 9.
A new form factor may have some shortcomings, but I believe that within a mature form factor, Magic 9 will make people feel that it was worth waiting for.
Preconceptions are the biggest thing to fear. I hope everyone can cast aside their old impressions of Honor and turn a new page.
KrASIA features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Qiu Xiaofen for 36Kr.
Note: RMB figures are converted to USD at rates of RMB 6.75 = USD 1 based on estimates as of August 20, 2026, unless otherwise stated. USD conversions are presented for ease of reference and may not fully match prevailing exchange rates.