If you’re like me you probably spend more time with your phone than with any other person. My phone is my alarm clock, my personal assistant and my exercise coach all in one. But there’s a reason why most people wouldn’t consider it a friend, it looks nothing like a human being. It can’t talk to you. It can’t comfort you after that stupid breakup. It can’t party with you.
But that’s about to change with “RoboHon”. RoboHon is Japanese for Robot Smartphone. Pretty self-explanatory, right? But it’s so cool, it’s worth saying again: “It is a smartphone that is a humanoid robot”.
You can see the clip that holds it in place. So the little guy doesn’t fall off.
It’s 19.5 cm tall with limbs that move. It comes with facial and voice recognition. It has a 2-inch screen on its back (320px 240px) but it also comes with a projector on its head to display things that wouldn’t fit. RoboHon can use the Wifi and send and receive calls, texts and emails. If you want to slide it in your jacket or trouser pocket there’s a clip in the front that holds it securely in place. Sure it’s bulky and big and (probably) expensive but then there’s nothing else quite like it.
If he can dance then you can too!
The tagline is “a phone that moves the heart”. It can say “I love you” when you’re sad. It will willingly dance if you politely ask. It will talk to you about how beautiful the sunset is. It goes on sale in Japan next year and the speech recognition is currently limited to Japanese but personally I hope it makes it big just because I want to see more humanoid smartphones. So what do you think? Is this going to be totally impractical or this the future? I think we can all agree, though, that this is way too adorable. 😉
It’s worth seeing the promotional video. It’s in Japanese with English subtitles.