ZTE's Nubia to Launch World's First Mass-Produced AI Agent Smartphone at WAIC 2026

Nubia is pushing smartphone AI competition to an entirely new level — not just another voice assistant upgrade, but a system-level AI agent that can truly operate the phone on its own.

ZTE Senior Vice President and Mobile Devices Division President Ni Fei confirmed that Nubia will launch the world's first mass-produced AI agent smartphone at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), running July 17-20 in Shanghai.

The device is widely expected to be the second-generation Doubao phone, co-developed with ByteDance. Its predecessor, the Nubia M153, launched as a technical preview in late 2025 and sold out its initial 30,000 units in a single day. However, it faced a critical flaw: the phone used system-level INJECT_EVENTS permissions to simulate user clicks, triggering security alarms in WeChat, Alipay, and banking apps, leading to blocks within five days.

Industry sources indicate the second-generation device has shifted to MCP (Model Context Protocol) and A2A (Agent-to-Agent) protocol-based agent interaction, eliminating the need for screen recognition and simulated clicks. This bypasses the platform blocking issues that plagued the M153. The new phone is seamlessly integrated with Alipay, Meituan, Didi, and Baidu ecosystems, according to reports.

The phone's technical architecture is built on three layers: deep system-level AI integration at the OS layer, on-device large language model inference for privacy and speed, and an open architecture allowing third-party developers to plug in their own AI capabilities. Users can issue natural language commands like "book the cheapest flight to Beijing," and the AI agent will autonomously open relevant apps, compare prices, fill in passenger details, and complete payment.

On the hardware side, the device features a blue back panel with a silver metal frame and a prominent orange dedicated AI button on the side. The rear camera module uses a horizontal bar design reminiscent of the iPhone Air. Full specifications remain undisclosed, but the first-gen M153 packed a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset with 16GB RAM and 512GB storage.

This marks a paradigm shift from "AI as a tool" to "AI as a digital worker" in the smartphone industry. When AI can not only answer questions but understand and operate the phone's interface like a human, the entire mobile app ecosystem faces a new interaction paradigm. The actual performance of this device at WAIC will be the most important validation yet of where AI-powered mobile computing is headed.