Hands-On With Nubia's Doubao Phone 2: In-App Automation Still Blocked in WeChat, Xiaohongshu, Meituan and Taobao

A hands-on test of Nubia's second-generation Doubao phone reached a blunt conclusion: the device, which markets AI automation as its selling point, still cannot carry out in-app automated operations in WeChat, Xiaohongshu, Meituan Waimai or Taobao.

In practice that means users cannot yet ask the phone's assistant to send a message in WeChat, browse notes in Xiaohongshu, place an order on Meituan Waimai or complete a purchase on Taobao. The most mundane and most desirable tasks to delegate are precisely where automation has not been wired up.

The limitation is not surprising. In-app automation requires reading interface content and simulating taps, which runs straight into user privacy, platform rules and account security. Third-party apps rarely open an operating channel to an outside assistant, which makes a phone-level agent far messier in reality than in a demo.

Nubia's Doubao Phone 2 extends the Doubao assistant into phone hardware, with the pitch that AI should move from answering questions to acting on the user's behalf. The test shows there is still a substantial engineering and ecosystem gap between the demo and daily use.

For users, the value of the review is calibration. The reach of an AI phone today is concentrated in system operations and first-party services; third-party apps are the deep end, and reaching them requires new agreements between handset makers and app developers rather than better on-device models alone.

Two paths now compete. One is signing deals with major apps one by one in exchange for automation rights; the other is narrowing the feature set to controllable scenarios, starting with system-level and first-party services. Whether super-apps such as WeChat and Taobao ever allow an assistant to act inside them will decide how large the gap between the marketing and the real experience remains.