Nubia has confirmed plans to launch what it describes as the world’s first AI agent smartphone later this month, with the device set to make its public debut at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2026 in Shanghai, running from July 17 to July 20. The announcement was made by Ni Fei, Senior Vice President of ZTE and President of the company’s Mobile Devices division, who described the upcoming device as the first smartphone in the world designed around a genuine artificial intelligence agent rather than a conversational assistant layered on top of existing functions.
Unlike most AI powered smartphones currently on the market, which primarily respond to questions or generate text and images, Nubia says its AI agent will be deeply integrated at the system level of the device, giving it the ability to operate applications and complete multi step tasks on a user’s behalf. According to the company, the phone relies on an architecture built around visual interface agents, allowing the AI model to analyse the phone’s screen directly, identify interface elements, and interact with them the way a human user would, rather than depending solely on programming interfaces between individual apps. The system reportedly runs on a large language model executed directly on the device, paired with a proprietary coordination layer that manages actions across multiple applications and services simultaneously.
The upcoming device is widely expected to be the commercial successor to the Nubia M153, a technology preview phone launched in China in December last year in partnership with ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. The M153 featured ByteDance’s Doubao AI assistant, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, 16 gigabytes of RAM, and 512 gigabytes of storage, and reportedly sold out its initial batch of 30,000 units within a single day of going on sale. Industry sources have suggested the new device could represent the fully developed, general public version of that earlier preview model, though Nubia has not officially confirmed its name, hardware specifications, or connection to ByteDance.
Nubia’s demonstration scenario for the new agent involves asking the phone to find and book the cheapest available flight, with the AI reportedly capable of opening relevant travel apps, comparing prices across services, filling in personal booking details, and completing payment without requiring the user to touch the screen. Nubia is not alone in pursuing this category of device, with Chinese AI company StepFun also expected to showcase a competing AI agent smartphone at the same WAIC 2026 event, setting up a direct comparison between the two approaches to system level AI integration in mobile devices.
More details on the phone’s specifications, pricing, and availability are expected to be revealed during the WAIC event itself. Nubia has given no indication of plans for a launch outside China, meaning the device is likely to remain exclusive to the Chinese market for the foreseeable future, similar to its predecessor. The launch reflects a broader shift among Chinese smartphone makers toward building AI agents capable of directly operating a phone’s software rather than simply answering questions, a category current Western competitors including Apple, Samsung, and Google have yet to match in terms of claimed depth of system level integration.
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