Some Thought Honor’s Robot Phone Was Fake Until JerryRigEverything Tried to Break It

Honor just launched a $1,500 Android flagship with a folding titanium robot arm that holds its 200-megapixel main camera, and Zack Nelson of JerryRigEverything got one the same week Apple dominated every headline. He expected a concept that barely worked. What arrived instead was a finished phone whose three-axis gimbal hides behind a sliding plastic cover until you tell it to wake up.

Sliding the cover aside allows the camera to rise using tiny motors. Honor claims are 70% smaller than those found in a normal pocket gimbal. They remain silent and cut power when they encounter opposition, so they do not grind themselves apart. Nelson observed the camera head temperature rise to 120 degrees Fahrenheit after only a few minutes of recording since no specialized cooling reaches the remote sensor. The arm can lift the entire phone but refuses to fully extend while the device is flat on a table.

The front glass, branded Nano Crystal Shield, showed small scratches at Mohs level 6 and larger grooves at level 7, which matches most contemporary flagship panels. The robot camera lens, as well as the 50-megapixel selfie camera hidden beneath the display, are both behind glass. A 26-second bombardment at 6,800 nits left the screen unscathed.

Sand changed the story, as sand packed into the joints made the arm difficult to extend and unable to retract completely, even after Nelson cleaned it. Honor rates the phone as IP54 only when the mechanism is stowed. Once the arm is deployed, dust has a clear passage. Nelson made it plain that this phone does not belong near the beach.

The phone body itself shrugged off the standard pressure and flex tests. A vapor chamber is bonded to the back of the display, and a 7,060 mAh silicon-carbon battery may be accessed without removing the screen. Braided wires flow through the arm instead of fragile ribbons, preventing connections from snapping under constant motion. Actuators machined to 0.005 mm tolerance weigh only 2.6 g each.

Nelson finished with a phone that still worked but with a permanently reluctant arm. He described the engineering as very good for a first attempt and questioned when Honor will add adequate sealing so customers could take the camera outside.