Anyone who follows the smartphone industry knows it’s in dire need of innovation. Sure, there are continual improvements to processing power, battery life, camera quality, and countless creative software features. But phones are essentially the same basic design, a rectangular black slab you hold in your hand.

That void of smartphone innovation was addressed at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC), but not in the way anyone would expect. The industry’s fixation on generative AI chatbots has been superseded by a new species of phone, one that HONOR is calling a “Robot Phone.”

The so-called Robot Phone will feature a motorized 200MP gimbal camera, allowing it to nod, track, and even dance. The tech isn’t new, by any means. What makes the gimbal camera unique is how HONOR has miniaturized the tech that powers devices like the DJI Ronin 4D into a smartphone.

Using a concept called Embodied AI, the Robot Phone’s “brain” controls the motorized arm behind the phone, rotating it in different directions to track its user during a video call or shoot. To achieve this feat, HONOR had to re-engineer mobile architecture and develop a proprietary micro-motor. The motor is 70% smaller than existing hardware, uses high-performance materials with a 2800 MPa strength rating, and is the same tech the company used to engineer the hinges of its latest foldables.

Aside from its specs, the Embodied AI features a 4DoF (four-degrees-of-freedom) range of motion. At MWC, HONOR demonstrated that the Robot Phone can nod, shake its head, and even dance.

The potential application of this technology is quite extensive. One intriguing possibility taps into the world of filmmaking. With its partnership with ARRI, the German legends of cinematography, the Robot Phone features professional-grade color science and an AI SpinShot mode that allows it to perform 90 and 180-degree rotational moves that would otherwise require an entire film crew.