Published on Dec 24, 2025

Apple and its App Store have a problem. This problem is called the “M153” and widely regarded as China’s first real AI phone. It has been mostly sold out since it entered the market on December 1. Chinese media report that it is currently being resold on the grey market for up to 36,000 yuan, more than 4,300 euros. That corresponds to more than ten times its official price of 3,499 yuan.

“Will the iPhone become the next Nokia?” asks the Chinese tech blog Xinzhoukan (in Chinese).
The deep integration of an AI agent into the operating layer of the new phone promises to make constant switching between apps obsolet. And along with it, you might argue, many of their developers.

The M153 is the result of a collaboration between ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, and the previously little-known smartphone maker Nubia, which originally emerged as ZTE’s smartphone division. ZTE continues to hold a stake in the company. The new smartphone not only uses ByteDance’s highly popular AI agent Doubao, but also breaks new technical ground by integrating agentic AI directly into the operating system.

This enables a completely new user experience. The Chinese tech blog illustrates this with a vivid example. Anyone who suddenly has to leave for a business trip to Shanghai on a Friday evening may need to buy a high-speed rail ticket on the Gaotie network, book an affordable hotel room, and inform their family.

Previously such a smartphone user had to click through a whole series of apps. These would very likely include the railway app 12306 for the ticket, Ctrip for the hotel, and WeChat to message the family.

Now, a single sentence expressing the so-called user intention to the AI phone is enough, and its agent independently executes the complex chain of research and actions across multiple apps in record time. Only where security or privacy are involved, for example during payment, is the phone’s owner still asked for brief confirmation.

For now, major smartphone manufacturers are still resisting. They don't want to give up their control as gatekeepers. Users in China report that the M153’s AI agent has been denied access to certain apps and functions. However, this is only the dawn of the AI phone era.

The future may belong to truly capable AI agents on smartphones, to agents that can do far more than simply set an alarm. “The smartphone industry has taken too long to deliver truly disruptive innovations to users,” Nubia CEO Ni Fei wrote in a comment. “The rise of the AI phone cannot be stopped.”

Behind the battle over app access lies a broader struggle for user data. Its outcome remains uncertain for now. From the perspective of defenders of existing architectures, however, there is a risk that clinging to protective barriers could ultimately disconnect them from the vast datasets that will be generated over time through the use of generative AI.

For the time being, the M153 is still called a prototype. Nubia and ByteDance are marketing their AI phone as a “Technology Preview Edition” and include fine print that effectively turns buyers into beta testers.

Indeed, manufacturers of AI phones still face a number of legal and technical hurdles before they can seriously challenge established smartphone makers. For example, access permissions for online banking and payment apps must first be clarified from a legal point of view. Nubia and ByteDance have therefore temporarily disabled some of these functions on their new phone.

There are also ongoing concerns around data protection. ByteDance has just published a white paper documenting its efforts in this area. Ultimately, however, these are familiar issues that can likely be addressed in similar ways as before.

From a technical perspective, the GUI agents underpinning these AI functions also still face significant challenges. On today’s prevailing user interfaces, the agent must be able to identify a wide range of buttons and text fields within milliseconds, navigate across multiple apps, and successfully ignore pop-ups and other dynamically loaded content.

The collaboration between Doubao, the AI agent of Douyin—the Chinese version of TikTok—should be understood as “a beginning,” says Li Liang, Vice President of Douyin. “AI is undoubtedly the future,” he adds.