Artificial Intelligence in Everyday Life The AI Is Now Integrated Into the Smartphone's Operating System

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Bytedance and ZTE have launched a smartphone with the AI agent Doubao integrated at the operating system level. The device sold out in no time. What can such an "AI-first" phone do?

The new AI phone sold out immediately in China. Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, developed it together with hardware manufacturer ZTE. Shortly after both companies made the first prototype of their "Nubia M153" available for online sale on December 1, 2025, all units were already sold out. Unlike in previous smartphones, the AI agent Doubao is not only active on the app level or as a voice assistant but is more deeply integrated into the device at the OS level.

The manufacturers describe it as an "AI-first" device. The AI agent, called "Doubao Mobile Assistant," can read the phone's screen, launch other apps, and execute multi-step chains of actions across multiple apps as a human would, they say. The Nubia M153 is therefore a phone with "Agentic AI," where the integration of AI and hardware enables new usage possibilities and thus new business models. Huawei and Xiaomi have also already introduced mobile phones with AI capabilities.

What's new this time is the deeper OS integration. "Unlike conventional AI assistant apps, which are limited to answering questions, this Doubao phone assistant is directly embedded at the system level and has full permissions," writes the portal Pandaily.

A New Data Octopus?

The company Bytedance, which processes the AI agent's requests on its servers, thus gains a new access point to users and can monetize the collected data. Bytedance has announced that it has no intention of exclusively building phones. Instead, the company apparently hopes to enable smaller phone manufacturers to integrate artificial intelligence into their devices.

Doubao, the LLM chatbot from Bytedance, was leading the market for AI consumer apps in October this year with 159 million monthly active users, far ahead of Yuanbao by Tencent (73 million) and Deepseek (72 million), according to statistics from the tracking platform Aicpb.com.

Trigger Command Chains

Users of the new phone can access the new functions either via voice command or through a designated "AI button." Commands like "Help me compare prices across multiple platforms and place an order" are possible.

Photos can also be easily edited with voice commands and then sent using the new phone. There's no need to open an app to book train tickets or download multiple files at once. The last feature is particularly interesting for many Chinese users because the phone is now almost exclusively used for sending documents.

For security-relevant functions, such as payment for orders, the human user would still need to be "prompted," according to several reports. While the AI executes the various processes in multiple steps if necessary, phone calls can continue as usual.

AI And Hardware United

The marriage of AI and hardware in the Chinese consumer goods market began even before the release of this new phone. Alibaba has launched an AI glasses product called "Quark AI." Huawei sells various AI-powered toys. UBTECH Robotics is already offering "AI pets." Several other companies have announced new products for this year.

AI must necessarily be anchored at the hardware level if more revenue is to be generated than with tokens, say Chinese experts. Phones are just one of many potential applications. "Future growth will come from the fields of consumer electronics, autonomous driving, and robotics," writes the newspaper Kechuangban Ribao. It is to be expected that there will first be a wave of rapid growth in AI phones and AI toys, while the adoption of AI in cars and robots will be more complex and progress more slowly. However, it has already begun in those areas as well.

In any case, AI agents will soon become the critical first touchpoint with consumers in many devices, according to many observers of the Chinese electronics industry. However, no one had anticipated that the new AI phone from Doubao and ZTE would sell so rapidly at a price of 3,499 yuan (around $470). It demonstrates that tech-savvy Chinese smartphone users are willing to pay real money for an AI-enhanced "user experience."

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