Source: nubia.com - Debut September 16, pre-orders are already live.
- Developed jointly by ZTE and ByteDance.
- The Doubao assistant will click across apps.
- On the side, a separate orange AI button.
The “AI phone” label is already used by almost every manufacturer and usually just means that a chatbot has been added to the system. Nubia NaviX Ultra tries it differently. It’s developed in collaboration with ZTE and ByteDance — the company behind TikTok — and its Doubao assistant shouldn’t be an add-on, but part of the system core. The premiere is scheduled for September 16.
An assistant that will click for you in apps
Doubao is a Chinese model from ByteDance, and in the NaviX Ultra it should work as an agent, not a voice assistant. Nubia splits its role into four areas: understand the command, complete the task, remember information, and ensure safety. The difference from today’s assistants is that it’s meant to handle tasks across apps. It shouldn’t just answer—it should also do what you want.
The technical direction is also interesting. Instead of having the AI read what’s on the screen and simulate taps with your finger like most solutions today, it should rely on MCP services delivered directly by the apps. That’s fundamentally more reliable: the agent doesn’t guess where each button is—it calls the function that the app itself makes available.
Orange button and a horizontal photo module
Design-wise, you’ll recognize the phone by two things: a horizontal camera module spanning the entire width of the back, and a separate orange AI button on the side that’s used to quickly launch the assistant. You’ll have four color options: black, pink, white, and blue.
Under the hood, it’s said to use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, a 6.78-inch 1.5K OLED display with 144 Hz, and a 7,100 mAh battery that’s supposed to charge at 90 or 100 W—via cable and also wirelessly. The cameras are said to be three: a 50 MP main, an ultra-wide, and a periscope telephoto lens, with a 50 MP sensor up front as well. The TechNode portal notes that Nubia hasn’t officially confirmed these specs yet, and for the battery it lists 7,000 mAh.
Chinese memory as the quiet star of the show
One thing on this phone is interesting even beyond the AI world. Nubia, together with the manufacturer ChangXin Memory Technologies, confirmed that NaviX Ultra will use Chinese LPDDR5X memory running at 10 667 Mb/s. According to the manufacturer, this is the first mass production deployment of homegrown LPDDR5X at this speed. For China, it’s another step toward independence from foreign memory suppliers. Among the announced partners are also Qualcomm, BOE, Samsung Semiconductor, and Goodix.
For us, the key question is whether the NaviX Ultra will be available outside China. Nubia ships its flagships to Europe, but with a delay—and not every model. With a phone built around the Chinese language model Doubao, a global version is even less certain. If you want to get your hands on it sooner, your route goes through sellers that bring phones in directly from China—in that case, you should always verify support for European LTE and 5G bands.
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