Since April, Honor has resorted to a myriad of strategic moves to combat its declining market share.

Laptops, budget smartphones, GT series, and X series have successively entered the market, yet the spotlight remains on the cornerstone of its product line: the Honor Digital series. The much-anticipated "final masterpiece" of the Zhao Ming era, the Honor 300 series, was envisioned to compete with rivals like the Redmi K70 and Realme GT6 in the 2000-yuan price segment, further seize market share, and stabilize its mid-range product portfolio. However, the performance fell short, with pre-sale market feedback disappointing and sales performance mediocre, leaving Honor internally disheartened.

This time, the Honor 400 series can be described as "bursting with sincerity," not only incorporating a 7200mAh ultra-large battery into its sleek design but also significantly enhancing its "imaging prowess." Notable improvements in imaging features such as Live photos and post-processing capabilities offer more avenues for stimulating creativity and sharing desires.

It is indeed uncommon in the industry to intensively launch and sell multiple new products within a month. It's hard to argue that Honor's actions are not a response to the weak sales in the first quarter. In 2024, despite the long-awaited recovery of the Chinese smartphone market, IDC data shows that Honor's market share slipped from 17.1% (ranking first) in the first quarter of 2024 to 13.7% (ranking fifth) in the fourth quarter, and completely fell out of the top five in the first quarter of this year.

Amidst this predicament, Honor is placing its bets on AI. In March 2025, the new CEO Li Jian announced the "Alpha Strategy," declaring the transition from a mobile phone manufacturer to an "AI terminal ecosystem company," with plans to invest $10 billion over five years to build an open ecosystem.

Simultaneously, Honor has quietly embarked on its deployment in the robot race. Leveraging years of technical expertise in AI computing, sensing, and terminal integration, Honor aims to use the "mobile phone + robot" collaborative ecosystem as a breakthrough to fill the gaps in scenarios beyond smart terminals.

As leading smartphone manufacturers such as Honor, vivo, and Xiaomi coincidentally lay out their strategies in the robot race, the true competitive landscape is extending from mobile terminals to embodied intelligence. This marks the dawn of a dual-track approach, with one side stabilizing the existing handheld device front and the other side leveraging embodied intelligence as a hub to construct a three-dimensional intelligent ecosystem connecting "human-machine-environment," opening up a broader growth trajectory.

01. Mid-range Configuration with an "Apple-like" Aesthetic

The Honor 400 may be the product with the strongest "Apple flair" to date from Honor, and it is also the only all-series straight-screen model in recent generations of the Digital series. With a length of 156.3mm and a width of 74.7mm, it boasts the closest body design to the iPhone ratio in Honor's history. Coupled with large rounded corners, straight-sided frames, and extremely narrow borders, the Honor 400 gives a very "Apple-like" first impression.

More crucially, Honor has significantly optimized the Live Photo experience: it boasts the smoothest 2K full-frame dynamic photo shooting capability on Android, supports editing functions such as cropping, rotating, applying filters, color adjustment, and creating movie-style collages, and for the first time on Android, allows dynamic photos to be set as lock screens and supports interoperability with iOS.

In terms of design, the Honor 400 Pro is equipped with a 6.55-inch centered punch-hole full-screen display, with a body thickness of only 7.8mm and a weight controlled at 196g. The entire Honor 400 series adopts a metal frame design complemented by a delicate matte finish.

In terms of performance, the standard version of the Honor 400 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen4 processor. Compared to the previous generation, the Snapdragon 7 Gen4 offers up to a 27% improvement in multi-core performance, while the GPU's graphics rendering speed is also increased by 30%. The Honor 400 Pro, on the other hand, is equipped with the full-blooded Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen3 processor. It can not only meet the full-frame requirements of heavy-load games like "Genshin Impact" but also bring high performance to daily use, with silky smooth photo swiping. However, the Honor 400 is slightly inferior to the GTpro in terms of chips and speakers.

In terms of battery life, while pursuing slimness, the Honor 400 series has not compromised on battery capacity. The series adopts an industry-leading innovative battery system design with an energy density of up to 880Wh/L. The entire Honor 400 series is equipped with a 7200mAh Qinghai Lake battery, with the overall volume reduced by 10% compared to the Honor 300 Pro, but the battery capacity increased by 36%.

It is worth noting that the core user group of Honor's Digital series has always been young individuals who value appearance, selfies, and video shooting experiences. The 200-megapixel + telephoto configuration of the Honor 400 series marks its expansion from "excellent selfies" to "full-scene imaging." Specifically, the entire Honor 400 series is equipped with a 200-megapixel AI main camera (with a 1/1.4-inch large sensor) + a 50-megapixel telephoto lens, covering the 135mm focal length known as the "air cutter," ensuring high-definition image quality and realism.

With six built-in classic film portrait styles (three imitating Kodak and three imitating Fuji), it has been nicknamed "one machine equals six CCD cameras." The series will be the first to launch the 4K Ultra HD Live Photo Collage function, which intelligently captures and stitches dynamic moments, providing users with a brand-new creative experience. However, objectively speaking, it is still somewhat challenging for mid-range phones to compete with flagship phones in terms of imaging hardware quality.

Overall, the standard and Pro versions of the Honor 400 series are not without flaws, but their competitiveness in today's mid-range market cannot be underestimated. Combined with a starting price of 2499 yuan and only 2124 yuan after national subsidies, the Honor 400 series still offers a cost-effective option for users who prioritize slim design and imaging experience.

From a brand strategy perspective, Honor's product logic this year has become increasingly clear. The Magic series targets the flagship market, the GT series focuses on performance, the X series targets the entry-level market, and the Digital series shoulders the dual tasks of "imaging + design." Although this matrix approach is similar to that of vivo and Xiaomi, Honor demonstrates more robustness in refining the details of its products.

02. Placing Hopes on Plan B

AI super telephoto is a clear direction for the future development of imaging, which has almost become a consensus within the industry. Limited by phone size and cost control, there are obvious boundaries to telephoto hardware capabilities. If the image quality bottleneck needs to be broken, AI will undoubtedly be leveraged.

Although the Honor 400 does not have a physical telephoto lens, with the support of a 200-megapixel main camera + AI telephoto, it still achieves a digital 30x zoom capability.

It is not surprising that Honor is placing its bets on AI. The IDC report points out that AI will become the main driving force for smartphone growth in 2025 and beyond. However, the current industry pain point lies in the lack of phenomenal landing applications or technologies for AI phones, and excessive expectations are placed on the competitive advantage brought by AI. As Michael Chui, Director of the McKinsey Global Institute, said, "Companies need to ensure that AI applications are linked to business processes and outcomes. Simply superimposing AI on the original processes cannot realize its true value."

According to CounterPoint Research data, smartphone sales in the Chinese market increased by 2.5% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025, showing a moderate recovery trend. Huawei topped the market with a 19.4% share, while Honor slipped to sixth place with a 13.7% share, down 12.8% year-on-year, making it the top brand with the largest decline in the quarter. During the post-conference interview, the new CEO Li Jian also admitted that Honor's sales have been "very difficult" since the second half of last year.

And embodied intelligence may be the "second growth curve" that Honor is seeking.

At yesterday's conference, CEO Li Jian unexpectedly announced Honor's entry into the robot industry, making Honor the second trillion-yuan chain leader to enter the robot race after Tesla. In fact, it is no coincidence that mobile phone manufacturers have collectively ventured into the robot race. Canalys data shows that global smartphone shipments reached 1.223 billion units in 2024, an increase of 7.1% year-on-year, but growth is expected to plummet to 1.5% in 2025.

In stark contrast is the vast potential of the robot sector. According to QYR predictions, the global consumer robot market size will soar from $41 billion to $170.4 billion from 2025 to 2031, with a compound annual growth rate of 22.9%. Amidst this huge contrast, numerous mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung, Xiaomi, and Huawei have flooded into the robot race in search of new growth.

Another key factor for mobile phone manufacturers to lay out the robot curve is that they possess deep and reusable technical accumulations in the fields of AI computing, sensing technology, and intelligent interaction. However, information feedback from the industrial chain indicates that the path to embodied intelligence for mobile phone manufacturers is not smooth.

Robots need to achieve autonomous perception, decision-making, and execution, which places extremely high demands on algorithms and dynamic environment modeling capabilities. Currently, China has not established industrialized quantitative testing standards, and the maturity of precise testing technologies for robot performance is insufficient, directly restricting the mass production process. In terms of applications, represented by household service robots, due to the generalization capabilities of large AI models, there is still room for improvement in scenario adaptability and interaction capabilities.

The good news is that Honor is not starting from scratch. It has a solid foundation in AI, hardware integration, and supply chain management. It is understood that the new industry incubation department of Honor has established embodied intelligence laboratories, embodied data laboratories, interaction security laboratories, powertrain laboratories, and bionic ontology research laboratories, clearly aiming to build a complete R&D system.

Industry insiders have revealed that Honor's embodied intelligence laboratory is also implementing the Alpha Strategy announced at the beginning of the year, aiming to integrate the accumulation of artificial intelligence and intelligent terminal technologies to promote the establishment of a new ecosystem.

If Honor's robots can be integrated with mobile phones and smart homes in the future, it will have the opportunity to build competitiveness similar to Xiaomi's "human-vehicle-home full ecosystem." Although players such as Boston Dynamics, Tesla, and Xiaomi have already taken the lead, Honor's "overtaking on curves" does not seem far-fetched.

03. Final Thoughts

The road to self-rescue is long and arduous. As Li Jian said, "We need about a year of adjustment time to continuously adjust and strengthen our capabilities, accumulating strength for next year and even future years of development."

For now, Honor's priority this year is still to focus on its main business and improve product consistency, and the Honor 400 may be just the beginning.

On the other hand, Honor has chosen to deploy embodied intelligence as a key scenario for AI implementation, facing considerable challenges in technology research and development, supply chain management, and commercialization. Whether it can replicate the success of Xiaomi's ecosystem or fall into the quagmire of "concept first" like some technology companies still needs time to give an answer.

But regardless, it is always commendable to have the courage to take the first step towards innovation.

*The lead image and images in the text are sourced from the internet.