I put Honor's Robot Phone against a pocket gimbal camera — here's which one I'd buy

The Honor Robot Phone is now available for purchase in China starting August 20 for RMB 9,999 (approximately $1,480), positioning it in the same price range as the iPhone 17 Pro Max in the country. When comparing the Honor Robot Phone to the iPhone 17 Pro Max, one question that arose was whether it outperforms a dedicated pocket gimbal camera.

The author tested the Honor Robot Phone alongside the Insta360 Luna Ultra to determine which option is superior, and the results may surprise you. The dedicated gimbal camera continues to perform better overall, but the Honor Robot Phone has come so close that you might not need to carry a separate gimbal camera anymore.

The most striking aspect of the Robot Phone is how closely its shooting experience resembles using a genuine pocket gimbal camera. Honor has installed a 200MP f/1.6 camera on a physical arm that can adjust to provide stabilization and follow subjects. Although the form factors differ significantly, the core concept remains largely the same.

The Luna Ultra is designed to be held as a camera, making it more comfortable for extended recording sessions, while the Robot Phone, being a standard smartphone, does not feel excessively thick.

There are a few distinctions between the two devices. In testing, the Luna Ultra proved slightly faster to start recording, and getting into the Robot Phone's gimbal camera takes an extra second or two. Interestingly, both devices share the same limitation regarding vertical video; neither physically rotates its primary sensor when switching to portrait recording.

Instead, both crop into the horizontally oriented sensor, resulting in vertical footage reaching roughly 2.8K instead of the native 4K. Moreover, the software experience on both devices is remarkably similar, offering subject tracking to lock onto a person and automatically follow them to keep them in the frame.