WAIC Intelligent Agent Smartphone Trend Survey: What chips do Honor, Stepwise, and ZTE each have?
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Author | Huang Yu
Over the past two years, although mobile phone manufacturers have launched so-called “AI phones,” they have not truly revolutionized the way humans interact with devices. Now, with the rise of Agents, the industry has found a new breakthrough point.
At the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) that opened on July 17th, Honor, ZTE, and Stepverse all showcased their AI phones. Honor’s RobotPhone is positioned as the “world’s first robot phone,” while Stepverse’s STEPX Neo and ZTE’s Nubia Navi X Ultra both hope to claim the title of “world’s first AI agent phone.”
In terms of product form, ZTE and Stepverse’s AI phones still maintain the traditional bar smartphone look, while Honor has made a breakthrough by integrating a professional gimbal camera into the body, which can extend and rotate.
All three AI phones still retain the traditional app interface, but their “work” capabilities have shown a significant improvement over previous AI phones.
The main idea is to add a layer on top of the existing mobile Internet ecosystem that can understand user intent, coordinate apps, and carry out tasks through an agent entry point.
As a large model developer, Stepverse’s competition isn’t just traditional mobile brands, but also the large companies supporting them. In addition to ZTE collaborating with ByteDance, Honor has partnered with Alibaba this time.
According to Wallstreetcn’s onsite reporting at WAIC, Honor defines its RobotPhone as an AI concept smartphone, integrating AI phone, embodied intelligence, and camera function modules. This is also the first time Honor demonstrates RobotPhone’s automatic task execution capabilities, revealing it is built on Alibaba’s Qianwen large model.
Onsite staff especially demonstrated RobotPhone’s ability to execute complex tasks simultaneously, pointing out that its task execution is composed through various means, including tools, MCP, A2A, and GUI Agents.
Wallstreetcn also experienced giving a one-line command to Honor’s AI assistant YOYO: “Help me buy a sunshade umbrella on Xiaohongshu.” YOYO quickly began the task automatically, using GUI mode, allowing the phone to simulate the entire user operation process.
But before the final payment, the system still paused and required the user to manually confirm payment. This detail also means that for now, Honor maintains manual confirmation for high-risk operations involving money or payments.
GUI (Graphical User Interface) means the AI identifies screen contents and simulates human actions like clicking, swiping, or typing to complete a task, without needing application authorization. The Doubao phone assistant previously used this approach.
Onsite staff told Wallstreetcn that the demo units mainly showcase the boundary of YOYO’s capabilities. “Theoretically, with any app, YOYO can attempt to invoke it, but once the phone reaches consumers, which specific apps can actually be called still depends on eventual agreements between our company and the app developers.”
On July 18th, Honor’s Chief AI Scientist Huang Fei also released Honor’s Agentic OS technical framework, detailing the four core features of Honor’s next-generation device operating system: intent-driven, natural interaction, proactive intelligence, and innate cross-device capability.
He stated that the essence of Agentic OS is not just “adding an AI assistant to the system,” but reconstructing a new type of OS centered on “intent” and “tasks.”
Stepverse, which rushed to announce it would personally enter the phone market before WAIC began, debuted its physical device to the public at WAIC, but didn’t fully reveal STEPX Neo’s appearance, focusing instead on showing its agent capabilities.
Users can access their personal agent, Stepverse Amoo, through the “Agent Space” displayed on the main page.
Amoo has two particularly unique modules—the “Seafood Market” and the “Repair Room.”
According to the introduction, the “Seafood Market” includes agent products brought in through external partnerships; the “Repair Room” contains three core settings: Soul Setting—to configure what type of assistant the Agent is, User Identity—to tell the Agent who the user is, and Agent Security—to manage agent permissions and operational safety.
Precisely due to settings like the “Repair Room,” Amoo can better understand users and be more accurate in task execution.
When onsite staff demonstrated how Amoo executes tasks, it would read the user’s chat and calendar information, but the phone interface didn’t switch to other apps—only at the final step of confirming results would it jump to a third-party app.
Stepverse’s chairman, Yin Qi, previously told the media that Amoo can only access third-party apps after first obtaining authorization, and does not use the GUI model.
Therefore, the prerequisite for using Amoo to execute tasks smoothly is that all the third-party apps involved in the task must have already reached authorization agreements with Stepverse.
While ZTE brought the second-generation Doubao phone, Nubia Navi X Ultra, to WAIC, it was kept in a display cabinet and not available for hands-on use, nor was there a live demonstration by staff.
Wallstreetcn learned from ZTE insiders that the mass production version of Nubia Navi X Ultra may also have to compromise.
According to a report by LatePost, the new generation Doubao phone has adjusted how it cooperates with Alibaba, Tencent, and other super apps: after user authorization, it will no longer read the screen or simulate human-like app operations (so-called GUI technology). Only if these apps provide their own MCP services, open some data, and allow control, can the Doubao phone access them.
Such a result isn’t surprising, since for mass-produced phones, the first issue for companies is legality, compliance, and risk—while GUI can easily trigger resistance.
At the end of 2025, the “Doubao phone” nubia M153, jointly launched by ByteDance and ZTE, made it clear—as an “engineering sample”—that more people could see the AI Agent’s ability to operate across apps; now, mass-produced AI agent phones are about to arrive.
Who will ultimately determine the industry landscape may not be whoever first claims the title of "world’s first."
When the battle for AI agent phones truly begins, who will be the final winner is still unknown, as the ability to execute tasks isn’t the hardest part—instead, the challenge is who can build a richer ecosystem of services. Meanwhile, consumer requirements for imaging, battery life, and system smoothness will eliminate weaker players.
For Honor, its advantage is in mature terminal capabilities; for Stepverse, it's the native agent OS and model capabilities that offer the greatest imaginative potential; and ZTE hopes to seize user mindshare for AI agent phones by deeply integrating with Doubao.
But all three face common and significant challenges: How to get more super apps to open up capabilities, how to establish unified agent invocation standards, and how to balance safety, privacy, and automation.
More importantly, their true competition may not be with each other. Leading phone manufacturers like Apple, Huawei, and Samsung have also created system-level agents. Once AI agent phones are proven to have solid commercial value, they too have the ability to quickly follow and achieve scale deployment.
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