(Credit: Eric Zeman)
BARCELONA—Honor kicked off Mobile World Congress (MWC) with an entire range of products, including a folding phone, a tablet, a laptop, earbuds, a "robot phone," and an actual robot. What the what? From everything I saw, here's what's got me excited.
The Robot Phone
Honor calls the Robot Phone "a new species of smartphone." Ahem. It puts AI into a phone with an articulating camera module that Honor says adds a more human element to interacting with the device. It can identify sounds, track motion, and maintain visual awareness. This lets it interact with you based on its environment. The module allows for 360-degree video calls that can follow you (that's not creepy) as you move around a room. The camera can "nod" and "shake its head" in response to your input, and "dance" when playing music (again, not creepy).
(Credit: Eric Zeman)Honor says developing the phone was an engineering challenge that forced it to rethink aspects such as weight, strength, and inner space. Really, the "robot" is a mechanized gimbal that has four degrees of freedom. The three-axis gimbal generates smooth video capture with AI tracking support. Features like AI SpinShot let you create movie-like shots. Honor hopes the phone will "close the gap between smartphone video and professional-looking storytelling."
(Credit: Honor)The Honor Robot Phone is just a concept for now. The company didn't say if or when it might bring the device to market.
An Actual Freaking Robot
If the Robot Phone doesn't have you rolling your eyes, Honor one-upped itself by debuting its first humanoid robot. The company says its robots, presumably based on this first one, will focus on providing three types of assistance: shopping assistance, supportive companionship (not creepy; also, no, it can't babysit your kids), and workplace inspections.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)Honor notes that it culled data from its smartphone customers to assess what type of interactions most are seeking. It will be able to recognize its owners, understand their basic needs, and provide personalized assistance. (Sidenote: If you haven't watched I, Robot, I would recommend doing so before ordering one of these.)
A Foldable to Challenge Google and Samsung
MWC marks the return of Magic. Honor showed off the Magic V6, its new book-style folding phone, which takes aim at the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Pixel 10 Pro Fold.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)The V6 is ultra-slim at 8.75mm when folded and about 4.4mm when opened. Despite the incredibly thin profile, it has an IP68/69 rating for protection against dust and water jets. Google and Samsung's phones don't have that. Moreover, they don't have batteries as large as the 6,660mAh cell in the Magic V6, which relies on silicon-carbon to reach its trim size. Honor says it plans to have a 7,000mAh silicon-carbon battery available for other phones before long.
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(Credit: Eric Zeman)The outer screen measures 6.52 inches, and the internal screen measures 7.95 inches. Both are LTPO panels with an adaptive refresh rate from 1Hz to 120Hz. Honor has pushed peak brightness to an astounding 6,000 nits and 5,000 nits, respectively. Honor says the new hinge means a 44% reduction in the crease's depth, making it less visible. Special coatings reduce reflectivity to as little as 1.5%.
It packs the best specs you can get. Inside, you've got a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 with 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage. The battery supports 80W wired charging and 66W wireless charging. Radios include 5G (sub-6GHz), Bluetooth 6.0, Wi-Fi 7, NFC, and GPS. It has stereo speakers and three microphones to generate stereo sound capture. The cameras include a 50MP/64MP/50MP combo with a f/1.6 aperture main lens, a periscopic telephoto lens, and a bright ultra-wide lens.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)AI is everywhere. Starting with the camera, it has an AI Color Engine, AI Super Zoom, AI Enhanced Portrait, and AI Motion Sensing, while the gallery app includes an AI Eraser, AI Upscale, AI Cutout, and AI Outpainting. Google Gemini is on board and powers tools like Call Translation, AI Translation, AI Writing, AI Deepfake Detection, AI Meeting Agent, and AI Suggestions. It looks like an incredibly powerful machine. Honor didn't immediately share pricing.
Even More Magic
Last, Honor filled out its portfolio of Magic-branded devices with the MagicPad 4 tablet and the MagicBook Pro 14.
(Credit: Honor)The MagicPad 4 appears to be a fairly standard flagship tablet. It has a 12.3-inch screen with a 3K resolution at 165Hz, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processor, and comes with either 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage or 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. It packs a 10,100mAh battery with 66W wired charging, a 13MP rear camera, a 9MP front camera, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and eight speakers that can generate spatial audio.
The MagicBook Pro 16 has a 14.6-inch 3K screen with a 3:2 aspect ratio and is available in three Intel Core Ultra variants with Intel Arc graphics, up to 32GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of storage. Rafios include Bluetooth 5.1 and Wi-Fi 6E.
The bulk of these devices will be sold in China, but Honor hasn't said which markets outside of China will have access to them.