Honor seems to want to avoid any surprises when it formally introduces its new Robot Phone to the world on 12 August. The Chinese company took to social media in its home region to detail the camera specs for the upcoming smartphone.
That seems a little counterproductive, since the cameras are the coolest thing about this device. That, and its time spent at the FIFA World Cup final. Maybe it’s a hype thing, maybe Honor is playing the market. Either way, here’s what we know about the Robot Phone’s camera system.
Robot Phone eye
This wasn’t just an image drop with a few specs, either. Honor posted an extensive presentation about its upcoming tech on Weibo, filmed at an imaging technology event in Hengdian. In addition to the Robot Phone’s camera specs, the company also revealed a partnership with ARRI, a German film camera company.
But it’s the camera tech that we’re really interested in here. Honor’s upcoming gimbal phone will use a 200MP 1/1.28in f/1.6 main sensor on the three-axis rotating bit. This can be used without the gimbal, of course, along with two other sensors. The backups are a 50MP ultra-wide and a 200MP periscope telephoto.
There’s a surprising amount of custom tech coming to the Honor Robot Phone. The image signal processor, the Yuguang H1 chipset, is made in-house by Honor. The H1 supposedly provides real-time, on-device processing of everything from white balance to glare reduction, capabilities that extend to the non-moving cameras as well. There’s also a custom 2.6-gram motor driving the gimbal. It makes sense. Nobody wants to add extra weight to the top end of a smartphone.
Honor’s partnership with ARRI is supposed to be responsible for native Log-C video encoding on the Robot Phone, with a batch of other cinema-style tech also supposedly making it into the handset. If you thought the Robot Phone had a shot at being cheap, it’s probably time to revise those hopes. But at least some of the camera features will trickle down to Honor’s other smartphones, notably the Magic 9 lineup, just without the gimbal, of course. Still, better recording support and colour grading are nothing to be annoyed about.
