If you haven’t already heard, the world has recently experienced what might be a major shift in the smartphone industry. Simply put, the days of the standard smartphone may come to an end, or be relegated to the same league as feature phones. Nubia has revealed the world’s first smartphone built around an AI agent.
Called the Nubia NaviX Ultra, it is also dubbed the Doubao Phone (or Dola Phone) because of its deep integration with ByteDance’s Doubao AI (Dola AI). Make no mistake: this is not just another phone installed with an AI app. The Doubao AI agent serves as the core of the operating system, making it a true AI phone.
Under the hood, it is reportedly powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, featuring an all-large-core architecture with hardware ray-tracing. The deep system-level integration is built on a GUI Agent architecture. It connects directly to mainstream apps through the official MCP and A2A protocols, eliminating the need for taps and clicks and allowing the Agent to run what you ask it to do without your intervention.
For example, asking it to “plan my trip to Shanghai on Wednesday” enables it to automatically search for flights, book a hotel, and add the itinerary to your calendar, allowing the phone to proactively complete tasks on your behalf.
The Doubao Phone has four core AI capabilities: it understands natural language, gets things done, remembers your preferences, and is built with security in mind. The latter uses on-device large language models for local processing, only requiring secondary confirmation for sensitive operations.
As expected, it has a dedicated AI hardware button. When pressed, this distinctive orange AI button on the side launches Doubao instantly. Because it is promoted around the concept of a “Doubao Phone Assistant,” it has been referred to simply as the Doubao Phone.
Aesthetically, it has a very Honor Magic8 Pro Air–ish design. A camera bump runs across the top where its three 50 MP cameras call home. The three sensors consist of a 50 MP main camera, a 50 MP ultra-wide camera, and a 50 MP periscope telephoto camera.
Around the front, there’s a 50 MP selfie camera punched through the 6.78-inch OLED flat display. This display is a 120 Hz 1.5K panel with symmetrical ultra-thin bezels on all four sides. The flat screen is contrasted with a quad-curved rounded metal frame, making it sleek and minimalist, IMHO.
No exact dimensions were offered, but it does look fairly thin. Despite this, reports indicate it packs a power-bank-level battery of around 7,000 mAh (with some leaks pointing to 7,100 mAh) that supports 90W wired fast charging as well as wireless charging of unknown wattage.
Other features we know of include a five-microphone array, a dual stereo speaker setup, and an AI agent operating system with cross-app task execution as previously mentioned.
It is offered in four colors: Blue, Pink, Black, and Silver (there are fancy names for each, but I would rather not loosely translate them). While it was officially announced on July 16, the complete specification sheet has not yet been released.
However, we do have a hint about the pricing: the retail price is expected to start at 4,000 yuan [CH] (~US590+).
This is not the first time ByteDance has dabbled in physical tech products, albeit the NaviX Ultra is not a ByteDance/Douyin-branded device. The company has previously collaborated with Smartisan for a smartphone. It even had a pair of TWS earbuds previously.
Images: Nubia [CH].
