JerryRigEverything disassembled the Honor Robot Phone down to screws: the body survived bending and fire, but the robotic arm didn't

The phone that has a small robotic arm with a camera that pops out from the back is exactly the kind of device where everyone first asks: How long does it last? The answer was brought now by Zack Nelson, the author of the channel JerryRigEverything, which subjected the Honor Robot Phone to its usual durability test and then took it apart down to the last motor. The result is mixed: the body is surprisingly sturdy, but the arm has one weak point that every owner should keep in mind.

Video from JerryRigEverything

In the video, Zack expressed hope that the Honor Robot Phone is only the first in a long line of robotic devices. You can watch the full durability test and disassembly here:

Honor Robot Phone: The phone that a robot comes out of

For those who haven’t read our announcement article: Honor Robot Phone hides a fold-out arm made of a titanium alloy in the back of the body. At its end there’s a 200 MPx main camera on a motorized gimbal that can track the movement of a person in front of the lens, or you can film it remotely using a controller. Honor claims it reduced the motors by 70% compared to conventional stabilizers so the entire mechanism fits inside the phone body.

During unboxing, Zack pointed out that the box includes not only the cable and a rubber cover, but also a 120 W charger. As for the arm pop-out itself, he says it’s surprisingly quiet—the motor is barely audible. What’s also interesting is how the arm behaves when you apply resistance: when he pushed a finger into its path, the arm immediately gave way and didn’t try to push back with force. It behaved the same way with the closed glass window—the camera turned, “looked” at the obstacle, and stopped.

The arm heats up and it won’t pinch your fingers

Less pleasing was the temperature figure. After about five minutes from unboxing, Zack’s thermal camera measured around 49 °C at the top of the camera module. The explanation is straightforward: in a normal phone the sensor sits on the vapor chamber or near a cooling system, but here it sits by itself at the end of the arm, with nowhere for the heat to go except through the metal arm structure. The teardown showed that Honor knew this—the back part of the camera housing is milled like a small heatsink, and the sensor is connected to it with thermal paste.

The arm’s safety lock is set very conservatively. The arm can lift a phone lying on a table while it’s being slid out, but the opposite is true: when the phone is lying on its back and the arm is supposed to extend, it can’t lift it. Zack sees this as intentional: the motors are software-limited so that no one will get their finger pinched or damage their pocket.

Glass, fire, and bending: The body passed

The classic part of the test went well for Honor. On the 6.31-inch display, the first fine scratches appeared at Mohs step 6, and deeper at step 7 — the level of the latest protective glass. The OLED panel with up to 6,800 nits brightness handled a direct flame for 26 seconds without any visible damage. The frame is aluminum with a knurled surface, and the buttons are metal.

What surprised Zack the most was the bending test. Despite the antenna bands around the buttons, the phone didn’t even move when bent. In his opinion, the added structure around the arm’s mounting likely increases the strength. In terms of body durability, the Honor Robot Phone passed without any reservations.

At the bottom edge, you’ll find a USB-C 3.2 port and a double-sided SIM card tray for two SIMs with a red rubber seal. The phone does not support a memory card, and the official rating is IP54 — meaning protection against dust and splashing water, not against submersion.

Sand is number one enemy of the robot

And that’s exactly where the most important finding of the whole video comes in for the IP54 rating. Zack poured sand into the arm cavity — and the result was bad. The arm barely slid out, managing only a few jerks. After blowing it out with compressed air, it started to slide out again, but even after repeated cleaning it never fully slid back in. There’s probably a single grain stuck somewhere in the joints, confusing the safety sensors.

Oddly enough, it’s the very same trait Zack praised just a few minutes earlier. The small motors are intentionally weak so they won’t hurt your finger, which also means they don’t have enough power to overcome even a tiny grain in a precisely machined joint. His advice is simple: don’t take the Honor Robot Phone to the beach. The IP54 rating applies to the phone, but the arm’s mechanics aren’t prepared for dust and sand.

View from the inside: braided wires instead of flex cables

When disassembling it, Zack concluded that the phone’s construction at first glance looks like a iPhone 17 Pro. Behind the rear plastic panel there’s a 50 W wireless charging coil, the display could be separated by heating it and prying with a thin tool. The interesting part is the placement of the vapor chamber — Honor has attached it to the back of the display, where, via a graphite film, it transfers heat from the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor out through the OLED panel.

But the biggest surprise came with the arm. Instead of flat flex cables we know from older phones with a sliding camera, the arm uses individual braided wires — for the motors and for data transfer from the sensor. Flat cables would eventually crack over time due to constant twisting, while a bundle of wires lasts much longer.

The battery has a capacity of 7,060 mAh and charges at 120 W. The good news for repair techs is that it can be removed fairly easily, and technically you don’t need to remove the display for it — just use isopropyl alcohol to loosen the adhesive.

What the robotic arm looks like from the inside

Getting to the arm is the hardest part of the entire repair. You need to remove the main board, the earpiece speaker, and the 200 MPx periscope telephoto lens, and under the glass of the camera module you’ll find four hidden screws. The wires inside the arm are color-coded based on which motor they power — the blue and yellow go to the lower segments, the silver ones run up to the sensor, and the green ones go to the stepping motor that moves the arm.

Honor states that the arm parts are manufactured with a tolerance of 0.005 mm. Besides the stepping motor, there are three rotary actuators in the segments, each weighing just 2.5 g, in the shape of flat “donuts”. The 200 MPx camera itself is, according to Zack, basically a standard module we’ve seen in other phones — the only exceptional thing is what it sits on. Next to it, inside the body, there’s also a 200 MPx periscope and a 50 MPx ultra-wide sensor.

What it means for buyers here

The Honor Robot Phone is officially sold only in China, and the European version hasn’t been confirmed yet. If you want it, you’ll have to go for imports — we recently found the Chinese version on a deal. But the JerryRigEverything test is a good reason to think about how you’ll use the phone: when the mechanics get blocked by a single grain of sand, repairs without local service after import are more complicated than with a regular phone.

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