Nubia wants to turn around by relying on bean bags

With the release of NaviX Ultra, the “Doubao second-generation AI mobile phone”, Nubia is trying to use system-level agents to establish new product premiums. For Ni Fei, this is another attempt to use new technologies to open the door to the high-end market after imaging, full-screen and gaming phones.

01. The mobile phone is in mass production, but its capabilities are still in public testing.

The mobile phone market in September was very lively. Folding screens and Pro flagship products from major manufacturers were launched one after another. Nubia joined the battle with its “beanbag second-generation AI mobile phone” NaviX Ultra.

On the big screen, this “mobile phone does things for people” process looks quite smooth. Users do not have to switch back and forth between several apps. As long as they say the request, the phone will try to take over the subsequent operations. Nubia’s official data shows that after the spot sales started, sales exceeded 100 million in one second.

However, more than a week after it went on sale, real user experience feedback is not that smooth. On social platforms, some people tried to use their mobile phones to order takeout through Meituan and shop on Taobao, but they failed to complete it successfully. Only by entering some products such as Douyin can they have a more complete experience.

A user who has received NaviX Ultra told Caijingtianxia that he tried to use his mobile phone to order takeout and plan travel, but these basic operations were still stuck. “Compared with the AI ​​functions of the previous generation of mobile phones, the functions of the second-generation AI mobile phones have no obvious improvement.”

Looking at the hardware alone, Nubia has put in a lot of effort this time. NaviX Ultra is equipped with the fifth-generation Snapdragon 8 Extreme Edition mobile platform, a 7100mAh battery and a flagship imaging system. It also has a dedicated AI button to evoke Doubao with one click.

More importantly, Nubia has opened up system entrance and related permissions. Relevant personnel said, “This phone adds a layer of ‘Beanbao Mobile Assistant’ between the bottom layer of Android and the App, and operates the application through GUI, A2A and some simultaneous interpretation capabilities.”

But this time, NaviX Ultra’s identity is a little different. It entered the ZTE mall and e-commerce platform in the name of Nubia flagship phone. It has a complete mass production scale and price gradient, and needs to compete with products of the same price range.

▲NaviX Ultra mobile phone developed by Doubao Mobile Assistant and Nubia

However, what really complicates the situation is that the experience of this phone is not something Nubia can decide unilaterally. As one of the first mobile phones to focus on the AI ​​concept, many users place orders for the idea of ​​”AI operating the phone for humans”, but actual use is not very smooth.

The reason is that super third-party apps such as WeChat, Taobao, and Meituan control the entrance to accounts, transactions, data, and traffic. If AI bypasses the homepage, advertising spaces, search rankings and payment paths and directly completes tasks for users, it will affect the original traffic and profit distribution of the platform.

In the second generation, Nubia and Doubao focused more on security cooperation and launched the Screen Automation Operation Declaration Protocol SAEP, leaving the decision-making power to application developers about whether to allow AI to enter and how far it can operate.

However, the problem of cross-end collaboration has not disappeared. According to the SAEP agreement, during the 30-day publicity period starting from September 14, if the third-party application does not actively accept it, the GUI agent will not enter the application operation. After the publicity period ends, capabilities that have not been rejected will be gradually opened according to risk levels, and applications that are clearly rejected will also not be operated.

As a result, NaviX Ultra is in a “pending” state: the phone has been sold, but ecological cooperation is still advancing. What consumers buy is a new product that has been officially released, but the most anticipated AI capabilities are still being tested.

This poses a problem for Nubia. Control of the experience is scattered among Doubao and third-party applications, but quality control, after-sales, etc. due to the lack of product experience need to be borne by Nubia.

Regarding the cross-end collaboration problems encountered by this mobile phone, a practitioner who negotiates ecological services with hardware manufacturers told Caijingtianxia, ​​”In the long term, transaction services will definitely be completed through backend interfaces such as MCP (Model Context Protocol) first. Operations based on GUI (Graphic Interactive Visual Operation Interface) are more suitable for scenarios such as games that rely on graphics rendering, and are not in line with the current development paradigm of large language models.”

02. Holding hands with bean bags, Ni Fei takes another chance

Bean bags require a mobile phone, but not every mobile phone manufacturer is willing to cooperate.

Most of the leading manufacturers already have their own operating systems, models and application ecosystems. Allowing external agents to enter the bottom layer of the system means handing over part of the entrance closest to the user to a certain extent. This is hardly an easy decision.

Nubia’s cards are different. It is backed by ZTE Group, and its R&D, supply chain and overseas business have kept it on the mobile phone industry table. Another segmented brand of Red Devils has also gained a foothold in gaming phones, with many attempts at active fans and liquid cooling.

The Red Devils became famous in the gaming mobile phone market, allowing Ni Fei to be entrusted with important responsibilities within the ZTE system. In 2019, Ni Fei was promoted to president of Nubia. In 2020, ZTE Group invited Ni Fei to manage the three terminal businesses of ZTE, Nubia and Red Devils at the same time.

Ni Fei later recalled that he had been thinking about this for more than a month. ZTE and Nubia were originally two relatively independent systems. After being managed by him at the same time, there is more room for collaboration in products, technology, supply chains and channels.

However, this kind of resource integration has allowed Nubia to retain its ability to manufacture mobile phones, mass produce and maintain after-sales systems, but it has not changed its position in the domestic open market.

For Nubia, what it needs more is an opportunity to be seen by the market again. There have not been many such opportunities in recent years.

IDC data shows that in the second quarter of 2026, China’s smartphone shipments were approximately 66 million units, and the top six manufacturers took away approximately 96% of the market; the combined share of ZTE terminal-related brands was only 0.3%, a year-on-year decrease of 33.5%.

Especially in the past few years, new stories in the mobile phone industry have become increasingly difficult to tell. Chips, screens, imaging and fast charging are still being upgraded, and the perceived differences between products for ordinary users are shrinking.

Bean bags give Nubia another option. Today, system-level agents are still in their early stages, and leading manufacturers are unwilling to easily open up system permissions. This is precisely the resource Nubia is willing to use for cooperation, in exchange for Doubao’s model capability advantages through complete machine research and development, underlying adaptation, mass production and after-sales.

In turn, Byte needs Nubia. After all, it is difficult for a bean bag that is only installed in the App to fully demonstrate its changes in the way mobile phones interact. No matter how powerful Doubao’s model capabilities are, it still needs to enter the system layer and use a real device to allow more users to use it in complex environments.

On the surface, this is a big model company exporting capabilities to mobile phone manufacturers. But in fact, both parties have come up with their scarcer things: Byte provides AI capabilities and traffic volume, and Nubia provides system entrance, engineering system and brand credit.

Ni Fei responded in a post on Nubia Mobile’s official Weibo: “In this era of great AI changes, the development of AI mobile phones is unstoppable, and our answer is to be open.”

He described the cooperation with Doubao Mobile Assistant as “1+1>2” and compared it with the cooperation between iPhone and ChatGPT, Samsung and Gemini, emphasizing that cooperation must ultimately come down to product experience.

However, the risks that both parties need to face are not exactly the same. For Byte, NaviX Ultra is a real testing ground to verify Agent capabilities. After its capabilities mature, Byte can still take advantage of the Doubao system to find more hardware partners.

For Nubia, this is a flagship phone that needs to be evaluated directly by consumers, and it is also an opportunity to try the high-end market again. The feedback from the trial will fall on Doubao and the “Nubian” brand.

03. AI brings Nubia to high-end development

Since its birth, Nubia has wanted to make high-end mobile phones.

In 2012, the Nubia brand was released. Two months later, the first product Z5 came out, with the regular version priced at 3,456 yuan. At that time, it was defined as a high-end smartphone brand launched by ZTE for social channels.

However, the initial sales performance of the Z5 was not ideal. By the Z7 generation, Nubia has expanded its product line to multiple price points of 1,499 yuan, 1,999 yuan and 3,456 yuan. The brand hopes to go higher, and sales need to be supported by more affordable prices. This pull has appeared very early.

For more than 10 years since then, Nubia has been looking for new technology labels for high-end products. The Z9 in 2015 focused on “bezel-less” and the price reached 3,499 yuan to 4,499 yuan; the Z17 in 2017 hit the flagship market with Snapdragon 835 and up to 8GB of memory; and the Z30 Pro in 2021 pushed the price to 4,999 yuan to 5,999 yuan.

Under-screen camera, true full screen, 35mm main camera and physical shutter button are the hallmarks that distinguish Nubia from other Android phones. However, despite its sincerity in terms of hardware, Nubia has always lacked a label that makes the product memorable enough.

The most typical one is that Nubia has been doing under-screen cameras for many years. It was not until Apple brought under-screen camera technology into the iPhone this year that online discussions quickly heated up. Only then did many people realize that off-screen photography is a project that Nubia has been working on for many years.

In this regard, ZTE Vice President Zhang Lei’s response was also meaningful, “Apple’s off-screen photography is very good, and it also proves the direction we adhered to 7 years ago.” The implication is that they are forward-looking in their product direction.

A mobile phone practitioner who follows Nubia told Caijingtianxia, ​​”Nubian mobile phones are very good at photography. Its 35mm humanistic photography is the first time Nubia has used it. Before that, other brands used 28mm.”

However, although Nubia has always wanted to hit the high-end market, its technical selling points such as flagship chips, large-capacity batteries, high-specification fast charging, under-screen cameras, and complete full-screen displays have given it sufficient presence in terms of parameters, but product prices have not been all the way up.

Over the years, Ni Fei has led Nubia to constantly search for new product directions. The purpose is to take a step forward in a position where leading manufacturers have not yet fully established themselves, and to regain attention with clear enough differences.

In an interview in 2020, Ni Fei rarely looked back on the not-so-smooth parts. He said that talking about Nubia’s development in recent years is a “relatively heavy topic.”

Nubia has caught up with the rapid growth of China’s smartphone market, and has also made a name for itself with technologies such as imaging, full network connectivity and bezel-less. But Ni Fei admitted that in terms of market share, the brand did not meet initial expectations.

This time, Nubia has put new chips on AI.

At a recent press conference, Ni Fei reviewed the accumulation of this product line: “From the first AI phone Nubia Z17 in 2017, to the AI ​​native phone Nubia M153, to today’s mass production of Nubia NaviX Ultra, the feedback from the market and users has convinced us that the direction of smart phones is the right one.”

The answer given by NaviX Ultra is to try to use system-level agents to create new product premiums. This is also a quite special one among Nubia’s previous high-end attempts. This brings a new enough and imaginative story to Nubia.

For Ni Fei and Nubia, this is another attempt to use new technologies to open the door to the high-end market after imaging, full-screen and gaming phones. However, how this story is told next is not completely in its own hands.