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 While Honor has already made plenty of product announcements, with tablets, foldables and more, its most interesting device at MWC 2026 is the Robot Phone — and maybe the humanoid robot that came alongside it.
After briefly showing off a model at CES, Honor isn't quite ready to launch its Robot Phone. However, we got more specs, tech demos and a closer look following the company's MWC press event in Barcelona. The Robot Phone is currently set to launch later this year.
Image by Mat Smith for Engadget
Honor has put a lot of effort into ensuring its camera gimbal is highly mobile, to the point of creating a tiny personal robot that is, dare I say, adorable? The Robot Phone's pop-up camera can cock its head, shake to say no, nod to agree, and even "flip" - or at least rotate 360 degrees. According to Honor's presentation, it can even bop along to songs. A spokesperson told me that it's got five songs in its repertoire, so it's not clear whether they're programmed for these kind of demos, or will be a feature of the final retail device.
Another demo here at MWC showed how you could make the Robot Phone "sleep" by covering its gimbal eye, though it's odd that the camera is still exposed rather than folded away. My main concern with the Robot Phone is the robustness and durability of its robotic mechanisms. We've lived through several waves of smartphones that at
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Honor launched the Magic V5 in August 2025 and yet its successor is being announced just seven months later. Speak to Honor's representatives, and you can imply that it's racing to push the envelope against both its real competition (Samsung) and its anticipated one (Apple). With so little time between launches, you'll be unsurprised to learn that little has changed. The only other real reason this device has been pushed out so swiftly is because it'll help Honor retain the title of making the world's thinnest foldable. I'll leave you to decide if you think that's a valid enough reason to release a whole new smartphone so soon.
Last year, just one of the four Magic V5 colorways measured in at 8.8mm folded and 4.1mm open while the rest clocked in at 9mm and 4.2mm respectively. This year Honor is marking its own homework with a similarly generous spirit, with the white version of the Magic V6 measuring 8.75mm folded and 4.0mm open. The black, gold and red colorways will have to settle for the indignity of measuring 9mm folded and 4.1mm open. Now, I appreciate the engineering savvy necessary to make a device this slim, but this push for more thinness needs to stop. Last year's Magic V5 crossed the millimeters-wide rubicon from slender to dainty, to the point where, while holding it, I was worried about how durable it was. After all, foldables are regularly put through mechanical stresses that regular phones never have to deal with in normal duty.
Honor says the phone is well built to withstand the rigors of normal life, including a scratch-resistant display cover. The screen is impact-resistant, there's a far stronger hinge and it's rated for IP68 and IP69 dust and water resistance. Claims that, I'm sure, will be tested to its limits by sceptical review
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