/ One command books your ride, food, trip
Mike Alvarez Joined TheTweaks as an emerging tech , startup and launches journalist. He comes up with those things or products which are not there yet and are hardly possible to come close to. He covers the latest technology, startups and new product launches and releases. He worked 4 years in a startup company in Austin and later he joined TheTweaks and he is proving himself here with his commendable writing performance. He is also the publisher of a small consumer robotics newsletter.
No more five taps through five different applications for booking a flight, ordering a taxi and having dinner. According to the Chinese AI startup StepFun, their new phone performs all these operations at once through one sentence. In addition, StepFun believes that its smartphone is the first of its kind in the world to have an agentic AI smartphone before Apple and OpenAI managed to come up with such a development.
StepFun introduced the StepX Neo smartphone during the launch event in Shanghai this week. StepX Neo is the first device from the StepFun brand under the new brand name StepX. Step AOS is the smartphone’s operating system that StepFun says that it was developed from scratch for the purpose of performing tasks through AI agents and not from Android. At the same time, the StepX Neo smartphone is equipped with the built-in Amoo assistant who will not only give answers to users requests but also perform actions on behalf of a person.
Today, every smartphone includes AI elements. But almost no smartphone gives a chance to perform actions through AI. This is precisely the problem that StepFun wants to solve.
On a regular smartphone, organizing a weekend trip involves opening a travel application, then a payment application, a ride-hailing application and then entering the required information in these applications. The main selling point of StepFun is that Amoo combines this whole process into one request. After giving the command to Amoo, an AI agent is supposed to understand the request, choose the necessary services and perform the task on behalf of a person without the need to open any application anymore.
To implement such actions, StepFun concluded direct agreements with China’s leading platforms: Alipay for making payments, Trip.com for travel services, Didi Chuxing for transport services and Meituan for ordering food. This means that Amoo can use these services the way a human assistant does.
The main difference between StepX Neo and any smartphone in the world is not the Amoo assistant since most AI smartphones have such a feature today. The main difference of StepFun’s smartphone is that Step AOS, its operating system, was allegedly rebuilt from scratch in a way that enables performing tasks combining phone functions in categories of communications, applications, files and system tools. Thus, whether this architecture can hold in practice and what is the difference between Step AOS and the Android app ecosystem cannot be determined yet until a public release. At the same time, StepFun mentions a security framework where the actions performed by the agents are run in an isolated environment where permissions are granted per-action and taken away after the task completion. This is an essential component since an AI assistant like this requires many permissions to function properly.
At this stage, the StepFun doesn’t provide such details as chipset, RAM, storage options, battery capacity, camera specifications, prices, or release date. So, this is a mere idea and demonstration yet.
Most media reports of StepX Neo’s launch were concentrated on the “first in the world” branding battle. A more interesting point is what is threatened by the agent native operating system.
For fifteen years, the business model of the smartphone industry included app stores where apps could get installed depending on the decisions made by them. They took a cut from each transaction made in these apps and controlled the interface between users and services. An operating system that allows an AI agent to perform actions on behalf of a user without the need to open apps in question reduces the app icons to background utilities. It turns the relationship from “user opens the app” to “agent contacts the service” and the owner of the agent layer becomes the new front door.
That is why the timing looks awkward from the point of view of Silicon Valley. Last week, Apple sued OpenAI because of the alleged recruitment of employees engaged in unreleased hardware. At the same time, the project of OpenAI’s hardware is said to be developed with Qualcomm and MediaTek and it is planned to release it only within the next one or two years. StepFun did not want to wait for it.
This is also not the first attempt of China. ByteDance and ZTE launched the Nubia M153 smartphone in December 2025 with the integrated Doubao assistant. It was sold out instantly. StepFun’s argument is that the Nubia phone was still an Android smartphone with added AI while Step AOS is agent native. This distinction exists officially. However, only independent testing will prove it.
The agent that can book flights, perform payments via Alipay and order food without supervision requires a special level of permission that no app has ever requested from the users. According to StepFun, permissions are granted per-action and revocable after the action execution. StepFun published a security whitepaper about it together with Shanghai AI Lab. This is a logical first step to take. However, this is the kind of statement that requires you to prove its validity by real actions and experience before trusting this agent with your payment apps.
StepFun has chosen the right battle at the right time. Apple and OpenAI are involved in litigation right now, while a small Chinese startup has launched a working demo of a smartphone both of them strive to develop. This is really a unique first mover opportunity and the architecture of an OS level integration is more serious than putting a chatbot on top of Android.
However, “first in the world” claims are outdated quickly in consumer technology and this one still lacks basic parameters that make or break a smartphone: price, specifications, release date and above all, proof that Amoo is capable of performing a complex operation outside a stage demo. Until the StepX Neo smartphone will be released and tested by people other than StepFun’s employees, consider this as a very promising preview of the future of phones.
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