China is moving ahead briskly in the AI arms race. While the rest of the world has been seeing an influx of AI-driven smartphone features, mainly voice assistants and app-by-app interactions, China has taken a major leap. ZTE, a Shenzhen-based multinational telecom company, has introduced a smartphone powered by an AI agent. Built in collaboration with ByteDance, the device features an agent that doesn’t just live inside apps but is integrated directly into the operating system. Its most striking capability is that it can operate the smartphone the same way a human would.

Taylor Ogan, an entrepreneur from Shenzhen, took to his X (formerly Twitter) account to share the prototype named Nubia M153. The smartphone runs on a customised version of Android integrated with ByteDance’s Doubao AI a

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