This September, Apple's iPhone Duo and Huawei's tri-fold device once again stirred excitement in the smartphone industry. Yet beyond the buzz, one question remains worth pondering: after years of evolution, why do users still have to shuttle busily between apps? Following last year's launch of a technical preview engineering prototype, the M153, this year Nubia's NaviX Ultra is pressing forward with the help of artificial intelligence. Released on September 16 and officially positioned as the "world's first AI agent phone," the device combines natural language interaction, task execution, memory and security mechanisms, enabling the phone to begin understanding goals, organising steps and advancing them on behalf of the user.
The Nubia NaviX Ultra is now on sale. The 12GB+512GB version is priced at 5999 元, or 5499 元 with the national subsidy applied; the 16GB+512GB version is 6499 元 and the 16GB+1TB version is 7499 元. We have already spent too much time learning how to use our phones. It is time, in turn, for phones to seriously learn how to help people.
The outside world often equates "the next-generation phone" with new form factors such as folding displays, and the rivalry over screens, hinges, thickness and weight has never let up. Yet the directions worth exploring in the smartphone industry clearly go beyond how many times a device can fold or how far it can unfold. The burden users shoulder every day as they hunt for entry points across apps and repeat the same steps also needs to be addressed. This time, Nubia has placed its innovation focus here. The capabilities of the NaviX Ultra can be summed up as "it understands you, it gets things done, it remembers and it stays secure." Users need only state their needs directly, and the phone can understand them, break down the task and coordinate services.
Steps that previously required users to repeatedly tap and search within apps can now be handled with the phone's assistance.
Nubia NaviX Ultra redefines how a phone is used
Nubia has thereby stepped out of this autumn's form-factor arms race, pushing smartphone competition toward AI interaction and task execution. The revolutionary change brought by intelligent agents allows the phone to take on more of the operations previously performed by users, letting them spend less time and effort on the same tasks. The M153 shown last year already gave people a glimpse of what AI phone operation could look like: users issue commands through natural language, and the phone can invoke apps, stringing together multiple steps to complete a task. However, that technical preview was aimed mainly at industry players and early adopters. With the NaviX Ultra ready for mass-market launch, Nubia had to consider the habits of ordinary users more deeply, and resolve issues around app coordination, permission management and day-to-day stability.
This year, the Nubia NaviX Ultra adds several technical routes for cross-app collaboration. Among them, by relying on the MCP protocol, which provides a unified interface for AI to invoke external tools and data, the phone assistant is able to connect with more external partner apps, calling services according to agreed conventions and retrieving execution results. Within the bounds of platform rules and user authorisation, this delivers a faster and smoother execution experience. When apps expose services through interfaces, task execution becomes less dependent on page layout and button placement, and it becomes easier to clarify which capabilities may be invoked and which operations require authorisation.
Once users express their needs, common rules govern interaction between the phone and apps, providing a foundation for completing tasks in a compliant and stable manner.
The NaviX Ultra also manages operational permissions through lockscreen identity verification and tiered task authorisation. When payments, sending, deletions or private information are involved, the system queries the user or asks them to take over, depending on the risk level. Even as AI helps handle cumbersome steps, critical decisions remain in the user's hands — a prerequisite for anyone to feel comfortable using an agent phone. Of course, in an era of rapid hardware development, the Nubia NaviX Ultra is also preparing for everyday use. Compared with the M153's 6000mAh battery, the NaviX Ultra raises capacity to 7100mAh, while adding a 200-megapixel sensor, a large-aperture antenna system and an end-to-end network communication enhancement engine.
A dedicated AI button with integrated fingerprint recognition combines waking the assistant with identity verification. When consumers buy an AI phone, they still expect it to take high-quality photos, maintain connectivity and ease their battery anxiety when out and about. Getting these baseline experiences right is what makes an agent phone fit for duty as a daily driver.
From the M153 to the NaviX Ultra, Nubia has continually refined its products around app partnerships, operational safety and overall device experience, moving the AI phone from a niche novelty for early adopters toward a mass-market flagship. Nubia's ability to be first to market with the NaviX Ultra is inseparable from ZTE behind it. An agent phone needs a model that understands what users say, and a phone system that cooperates in carrying it out. From voice interaction to app invocation, and through to network connectivity, power management and permission handling, software and hardware must work in tandem.
For the Doubao phone assistant, getting agent capabilities to permeate daily use requires a partner able to collaborate at the operating system and full-device development level. A model can interpret needs and plan steps, but which system capabilities it can call, how information is obtained through hardware, and how safety is guaranteed during execution all depend on the phone maker's involvement.
ZTE's long track record in communications and terminal R&D, with accumulated expertise in system development, network communications and full-device engineering, is well suited to support this kind of collaboration. From technical feasibility, through a usable product, to one users are willing to rely on every day, a great deal of engineering work is required in between. That is a capability built up over years in the terminal industry, and it is Nubia's advantage. The hardware of the NaviX Ultra is built end to end under ZTE's leadership, while the Doubao phone assistant leads the AI assistant experience, enabling the assistant to better understand and execute tasks. ZTE and Nubia are responsible for integrating these capabilities into the phone and completing product development and mass production.
Nubia's winning what can be considered the first ticket into the AI era is also underpinned by long-term investment. Starting with the M153, the two sides have explored system-level AI on real phones, and have used the NaviX Ultra to push forward a product aimed at the mass market.
As the product reaches ordinary users, Nubia can also learn earlier which tasks people hand off to AI, where they stumble, and improve accordingly. The lessons drawn from everyday use will accumulate into the foundation for continuing to develop agent phones.
項目 規格 電池容量 7100mAh 相機像素 2 億像素 RAM 12GB / 16GB 儲存空間 512GB / 1TB