ZTE Launches NaviX Ultra, the World's First Smartphone With an AI Agent Built Into the OS
ZTE unveiled the NaviX Ultra at WAIC in Shanghai, a Nubia sub-brand phone running ByteDance's Doubao assistant that promises to complete tasks across multiple apps on its own. The first batch of 30,000 units sold out fast and already doubled in price on the resale market.
The Phone ZTE Calls a World First
On July 17, 2026, ZTE unveiled the NaviX Ultra, under its Nubia sub-brand, at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, calling the device the world's first smartphone with a native AI agent built into its operating system. The phone comes in four colors (black, light pink, silver and blue) for 3,499 yuan, about $516, and the first batch of 30,000 units sold out quickly, doubling in price on the resale market, according to reporting from Gizmochina and TheNextWeb.
What Changes With an AI Agent Running at the System Level
The NaviX Ultra runs Doubao, ByteDance's AI assistant, activated by voice or a dedicated button on the device. The difference from current AI smartphones, which generally stick to isolated tricks like photo editing or voice dictation, is that Doubao operates as system level intelligence: it understands natural language commands and executes complex tasks that span several different apps on its own, without the user needing to open each app manually. Nubia President Ni Fei said the company has already completed the filing for its own large scale AI agent model.
StepFun and Honor Join the Same Race
The NaviX Ultra did not arrive alone: at the same WAIC event, StepFun unveiled its own operating system with a built in agent called Amoo, and Honor showed an AI agent developed with Alibaba, expected to reach new devices later in 2026. According to TheNextWeb, IDC analyst Arthur Guo projects that more than half of China's smartphone market will be dominated by devices with native AI by 2026.
A Bet to Reverse Five Quarters of Decline
The race for phones with a built in AI agent comes at a delicate moment for the sector: smartphone sales in China have fallen for five consecutive quarters, pressured by a memory supply crisis and weaker consumer demand. Chinese manufacturers are betting that the promise of an assistant capable of executing real tasks, not just answering questions, could be the trigger needed to reignite the device upgrade cycle.
Why It Matters Beyond China
For Brazilian agencies and companies tracking AI product trends, the NaviX Ultra is a concrete signal that the next battlefield in artificial intelligence is not just the model itself, but the hardware that carries that model straight into the user's pocket, always on and ready to act. If phones with a native agent genuinely gain traction at scale, expectations for everyday task automation are likely to rise among Brazilian consumers too, pushing banks, retailers and customer service companies to speed up their own AI integrations in channels like WhatsApp.