Okay, This AI-Powered ‘Robot Phone’ Has My Undivided Attention

MWC 2026 kicks off in Barcelona next week on Mar. 2. Short for Mobile World Congress, the annual mobile-focused show has traditionally been the global stage for many Chinese brands like Xiaomi, Huawei, and Honor to show off their latest phone innovations. The show has been quieter since the pandemic, but this year there’s one phone that will have my full attention. I’m talking about Honor’s “Robot Phone.”

Other than a few images that leaked around CES 2026, there’s not really much information on Honor’s Robot Phone. Its defining feature is what appears to be a gimbal-based camera that extends from the backside. Presumably using AI and some kind of computer vision, the Honor Robot Phone can “see” and “hear” a user, tilting and fidgeting as if it’s some kind of robot companion. The animated movements strongly remind me of Pixar’s Luxo Jr. lamp or Wall-E.

© Honor; Screenshot by Gizmodo

At first, it seemed like the Honor Robot Phone would be a glorified phone with a gimbal camera, much like the one on cameras like DJI’s popular Osmo Pocket 3 (and soon to be Pocket 4) that allows for super smooth, stabilized video capture. But Honor’s latest promotional video shows the camera interacting with users in various ways—ways that make it almost seem alive and sentient.

Can we talk about the Honor Robot Phone? Is this gonna be real or a concept demo?

Video credit: Honor pic.twitter.com/vcp6mGc0up

— Ray Wong (@raywongy) February 24, 2026

The video—one that’s clearly AI-generated in case you couldn’t tell from all the rubbery-looking people in it—shows the Robot Phone can be placed in your shirt pocket and “see” as you take a stroll, it could sing a lullaby and play peek-a-boo with a baby, or even offer critiques of your outfit. And, of course, it can shoot stabilized video.

© Honor; Screenshot by Gizmodo

Such an AI-powered robot phone, with a motorized and animated camera head, feels like something out of a sci-fi movie. It also might be too good to be true. While Honor may very well show off a working version of its robot phone, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s merely a concept that never gets commercialized.

As a guy who reviews a lot of phones, phone makers are still in the very early stages of making our phones “AI phones” with the intelligence of large language models (LLMs) and agentic computing, which is a fancy way of saying a computer does stuff on your behalf instead of you manually tapping through an app. Are phones really ready to have motorized limbs when our voice assistants can barely “think” intelligently and parse through our troves of personal data? I think we’re still many, many years away from that happening if robotics and phones ever converge at all. Remember how fast motorized selfie cameras came and went?

I love how weird this idea is, but I also have so many questions. How durable is this Robot Phone? One wrong bump or tumble and your camera could be dead for good. How much would the sentient-like camera impact battery life? It’s gotta be a heavy drain on battery life. Can it speak?!

© Honor; Screenshot by Gizmodo

Needless to say, Honor has my eyebrows perked. I’m excited by the idea of a robot phone infused with “intelligence,” but I’m not holding my breath that it’s the next big thing after foldables.

At the very least, Honor will have something more realistic to look forward to at MWC 2026: its next foldable, the Magic V6. The device will be the company’s fifth-generation book-style foldable that competes with the likes of Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7. Rumors suggest it’ll be even thinner than the Magic V5, boast the world’s first IP68 and IP69 ratings, and include upgrades to its “Super Steel Hinge” and foldable glass screen.