Honor Robot Phone fails the beach test — and the teardown goes just as badly

Honor's Robot Phone — the world's first smartphone with a built-in three-axis gimbal camera — just went through JerryRigEverything's durability gauntlet, and the results expose a serious tension between mechanical ambition and real-world toughness. The phone currently sells only in China, but the test footage is already raising questions about whether it can justify a flagship price tag anywhere in the world.

The gimbal problem

The Robot Phone's standout feature is a motorized camera arm that rotates and tilts independently of the phone body. In daily use, that's impressive. Under stress, it's a liability. YouTuber Zack Nelson found that jamming or blocking the gimbal causes the motor to heat up to around 50 °C (125 °F) — warm to the touch, though not dangerous in normal use.

The bigger issue is dust and water. Most 2025 flagships from Samsung and Apple carry an IP68 rating, meaning they survive submersion in over a meter of water. The Robot Phone is rated IP54 — splash-resistant at best, and only when the gimbal is retracted. Sand got into the gimbal joint during testing and knocked the arm out entirely. Compressed air couldn't bring it back. As Notebookcheck notes, the mechanical design simply has too many openings to achieve meaningful dust or water protection.

Inside the machine

The phone's body itself held up fine — it passed the bend test without flexing or cracking. The plastic rear cover is straightforward to remove, and the battery is relatively easy to replace. But inside, Honor's engineers had to make unusual compromises to accommodate the gimbal: braided cables run to the camera mechanism, routing around components in ways you won't find in a conventional phone.

Nelson couldn't reassemble the phone after the teardown. The mechanical complexity that makes the Robot Phone unique is also what makes it essentially unrepairable outside a factory setting — a real concern given that per TechRepublic, no official US launch has been announced and there's no Honor service network in the US to handle gimbal-specific damage anyway.

Worth the risk?

For most buyers, a dedicated gimbal accessory paired with a conventional flagship offers better durability and easier repair for less money. The Robot Phone is a genuine engineering achievement — but IP54 protection, a gimbal that sand can permanently disable, and a teardown that ends in defeat make it a hard sell at any premium price. Whether Honor fixes these trade-offs before a potential international launch remains to be seen.