I put Honor's crazy Robot Phone up against the iPhone 17 Pro Max — I'm both impressed and confused

Honor's new Robot Phone is finally official. After first teasing the device last year and then showing it off at MWC, the company has finally taken the wraps off its ambitious new smartphone at a launch event in China. The Honor Robot Phone goes on sale starting August 20, priced at RMB 9,999 (around $1,480). Sadly, there's no word on a global launch just yet.

The big highlight, of course, is the gimbal-mounted camera on the back. It promises much better stabilization and many of the features you'd expect from a dedicated handheld gimbal camera, while still giving you all the hardware and features of a flagship smartphone.

But does having a dedicated gimbal built into your phone actually make it better at shooting video than the iPhone 17 Pro Max? I put the two against each other to find out.

Honor has a hardware advantage the iPhone simply can't match

Right off the bat, the Honor Robot Phone has one pretty obvious advantage: it has an actual three-axis gimbal built into the back of the phone.

The 200MP f/1.6 camera sits on a motorized gimbal that can physically move around, and using it almost feels like having something like a DJI Osmo Pocket 4 built right into your phone.

The difference in stabilization isn't night and day. The iPhone 17 Pro Max already records incredibly stable video out of the box. Plus, you can also switch to Action mode if you need even more stabilization.

But put footage from the two phones side by side while walking, and you can definitely notice the difference. The Honor Robot Phone handles movement better, with the physical gimbal helping smooth out those little movements as you walk.

But stabilization is only part of the advantage. The bigger difference for me is subject tracking. The Honor Robot Phone lets you lock onto a person while recording, and the gimbal physically moves to keep that subject in the frame. Of course, there's only so far it can rotate before your subject moves completely out of view, but within that range, it keeps track of the subject pretty well in my testing.

And that's something you simply can't do on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. There's no option to lock onto a subject and have the camera follow them as they move.

I can already think of plenty of situations where this would be useful. If you're recording yourself during a gym session, for example, you could leave the Robot Phone in one place, lock the camera onto yourself, and let the gimbal follow you as you move around. The same applies when you're recording yourself outdoors or simply filming someone else without constantly having to reposition the phone.

But the iPhone still wins in a few important areas

Honor Robot Phone vs. iPhone 17 Pro Max (Video Test) - YouTube

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The Honor Robot Phone works great in most camera-related scenarios, but there are still a few areas where the iPhone 17 Pro Max came out ahead during my testing, particularly in low light. The Robot Phone introduced noticeably more noise in darker conditions, while the iPhone handled the same conditions much better.

There's also a noticeable difference when shooting vertical video. Yes, the Robot Phone can record vertically, but the 200MP sensor itself remains horizontally oriented. The sensor physically doesn't rotate, which means the phone crops into the landscape image to create a vertical frame.

As a result, you're getting roughly 2.8K resolution rather than true 4K vertical footage. The iPhone 17 Pro Max doesn't have that limitation and can shoot vertical video at up to 4K 120fps.

For someone who shoots a lot of short-form content, that's not a small compromise. And probably the biggest reason I wouldn't say Honor has outright beaten the iPhone for video just yet.

But apart from somehow fitting an entire gimbal camera into a smartphone, what impressed me most about the Robot Phone is that Honor hasn't sacrificed the rest of the flagship experience to make room for it.

You still get a 200MP periscope telephoto camera with 2.7x optical zoom and a 50MP ultrawide alongside the gimbal-mounted main camera. Honor has also somehow squeezed in a massive 7,060mAh battery, despite the phone being smaller than the iPhone 17 Pro Max in terms of overall dimensions. And you also get the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 under the hood, which means the performance shouldn't be an issue either.

I still can't say whether the Honor Robot Phone is a better overall video-recording device than the iPhone 17 Pro Max. That's something that will require a lot more testing. But when it comes to things like stabilization and subject tracking, the Robot Phone can do things the iPhone physically can't.

Overall, at $1,480, the Robot Phone seems like a seriously impressive package. It's just a shame you won't officially be able to buy one in the U.S.

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