A new era of agentic AI arrives on Chinese smartphones with the Nubia M153
On December 1, 2025, ByteDance took a bold step into the future of smartphone AI. The TikTok parent company officially unveiled the Doubao Phone Assistant—an AI that doesn’t just chat with you, but actually does things on your phone. And for the first time, it’s shipping on a real device: the Nubia M153, an engineering prototype developed in partnership with ZTE.
More Than Just Another Voice Assistant
If you’ve ever shouted “Hey Siri” only to hear something unhelpful in response, ByteDance wants you to know: Doubao is different.
The Doubao Phone Assistant operates at the operating system level, giving it unprecedented access to what’s happening on your screen and the ability to control apps directly. This isn’t the typical speech-to-text-to-server-to-response loop that makes traditional voice assistants feel sluggish and limited. Instead, Doubao sees your screen, understands context, and takes action.
In ByteDance’s demonstration video, the assistant performed tasks that would make Siri or Google Assistant envious. When shown images of a scenic location, Doubao could identify where it was and provide relevant information. It compared prices across multiple shopping apps, found the cheapest option, and placed an order—all through voice commands. It edited pedestrians out of photos using the native gallery app. It booked restaurants, unlocked a Tesla’s front trunk remotely, added podcast episodes to playlists, and sent text messages—often handling multiple tasks simultaneously in the background.
The key differentiator is the shift from “conversation” to “action.” While current AI assistants excel at answering questions, Doubao is designed to actually operate your smartphone like a human would—simulating taps, swipes, and navigation across applications.
The Hardware: Nubia M153 Engineering Prototype
The first device to showcase Doubao’s capabilities is the Nubia M153, born from ByteDance’s collaboration with telecommunications giant ZTE. This isn’t a mass-market consumer device—it’s positioned as an engineering prototype aimed at developers and tech enthusiasts.
The specifications are flagship-worthy: a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, 6.78-inch display, 50MP triple rear camera system, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 6000mAh battery. A dedicated side-mounted AI button provides quick access to Doubao.
At 3,499 yuan (approximately $495), it’s competitively priced for the hardware on offer. The phone is available in limited quantities through Doubao’s official website at o.doubao.com.
ByteDance and ZTE have been transparent about expectations, noting that the software “cannot guarantee the functional completeness of a mature mobile product” and may lag behind flagship devices in some areas. It’s a preview, not a polished consumer release.
The Memory That Remembers
One of Doubao’s most compelling features is its memory function. The assistant can convert recorded content—conversations, meetings, notes—into text stored locally on the device. But it goes beyond simple transcription.
Doubao identifies key summaries, conclusions, and schedules from this recorded content, automatically generating to-do lists and reminders. Users can ask natural questions like “Which seat was I in on last week’s train?” or “Where was that café I liked near the office?” and receive contextual answers drawn from accumulated memory.
This represents a leap toward the AI assistant vision portrayed in films like Her—technology that truly knows you and can recall the details of your life.
The “Her” Moment?
Speaking of Her, ByteDance’s announcement has reignited discussions about whether we’re approaching that cinematic vision of AI companionship. The Doubao assistant’s voice interactions are described by Chinese media as nearly “indistinguishable from a human” in terms of realism and emotional nuance.
Similar capabilities exist elsewhere—OpenAI’s GPT-4o offers real-time conversations, and Google’s Gemini Live enables interruptible voice chats. But what makes Doubao significant is the full integration: a Chinese-made AI, embedded at the operating system level, in a Chinese-made smartphone, for the Chinese market.
As Gan Lin from the Doubao Mobile Assistant team noted in the launch video, “It’s been more than a decade since Apple launched Siri in 2011. In 2022, the release of ChatGPT inspired the entire industry to reimagine the potential of mobile voice assistants.”
Market Context: A Window Before Apple
ByteDance’s timing is strategic. Apple has yet to launch Apple Intelligence in China, creating a window for domestic players to define the AI smartphone experience for hundreds of millions of users. Alibaba has partnered with Apple to bring AI features to Chinese iPhones, but that rollout is still pending.
Meanwhile, Doubao already dominates China’s consumer AI landscape with approximately 159 million monthly active users as of late 2025—more than double Tencent’s Yuanbao and ahead of DeepSeek. That massive user base gives ByteDance significant data and experience advantages as AI assistants evolve from standalone chatbots into embedded phone features.
The market responded enthusiastically to the announcement. ZTE shares jumped 10% following the reveal, reaching their highest level since late October 2025.
A Platform Play, Not a Phone Business
ByteDance has been explicit: they’re not entering the smartphone hardware business. The company confirmed it has no plans to develop its own mobile phone products. Instead, this is a platform play.
Doubao is positioning itself as the AI layer that can work across multiple manufacturers. ByteDance is actively negotiating with several smartphone makers to integrate the assistant into their devices. For smaller manufacturers who lack the resources to develop proprietary AI systems, partnering with Doubao offers instant access to cutting-edge AI capabilities.
Major Chinese manufacturers like Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Honor have already invested heavily in their own AI development, viewing large language models as core differentiators. Whether they’ll embrace Doubao or see it as a competitive threat remains to be seen.
The Road Ahead
The December 1st launch is explicitly a “technical preview”—ByteDance acknowledges there’s room for improvement and promises continuous optimization. The company noted that while demonstration content was all recorded from real interactions, the uncertainty inherent in large language model technology means those scenarios can’t be guaranteed to reproduce 100% of the time.
For now, the Nubia M153 is aimed at developers and early adopters who want to explore what system-level AI integration looks like in practice. Ordinary consumers might want to wait for more mature versions before making a purchase.
But the direction is clear. ByteDance has realized that to fully leverage AI, moving beyond apps and into the operating system layer is essential. From their PICO VR headsets to the Ola Friend AI headphones to this phone assistant, ByteDance is steadily building hardware touchpoints for their AI ecosystem.
Whether Doubao becomes the default AI brain in Chinese smartphones or remains a niche offering for smaller manufacturers, one thing is certain: the race to define the AI-powered smartphone experience is fully underway. And with the Nubia M153, ByteDance just put real hardware in people’s hands.
The Doubao Phone Assistant technical preview is available now on the Nubia M153 engineering prototype, priced at 3,499 yuan. Visit o.doubao.com for more information.
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