China's StepFun Unveils a Phone Run by AI, Not Apps
A Chinese startup launched a $560 phone where an AI agent built into the system does tasks for you instead of using apps.
Image source: Decrypt
Imagine telling your phone, "Book me a ride home," and it just does it — no opening apps, no typing, no tapping. That's the idea behind a new phone from StepFun, a Chinese AI startup backed by Tencent.
On October 13, StepFun launched the STEPX Neo, a phone built around an AI agent instead of traditional apps. An AI agent is software that takes a goal and completes all the steps on its own.
Key facts at a glance:
- Price: 3,999 yuan (about $560)
- Pre-orders opened on JD.com, Tmall, and Douyin
- Runs on its own operating system, Step AOS 1.0, with an AI agent named Amoo
- Nearly 100 partners signed on, including Alipay, Tencent, Didi, and Meituan
Here's how it works. The agent splits phone functions — messaging, settings, apps — into small pieces it can control directly. Simple tasks like setting an alarm run on a small AI chip inside the phone, while harder tasks that need several apps are sent to a more powerful AI in the cloud (remote servers over the internet). There's even a small second screen on the back showing what the agent is doing.
StepFun builds its own large language model (LLM) — the type of AI behind ChatGPT. Its newest model, Step 5 Preview, has 600 billion parameters (the internal settings an AI tunes while learning).
What about costs? The phone price includes 12 months of AI access — 100 billion tokens per month. Tokens are the small chunks of text AI services count and charge for. StepFun has not yet said what the AI will cost after the first year.
The bottom line: This phone is an early experiment in making AI the star of the device rather than just a helper. Whether users embrace giving an AI control over their daily tasks remains to be seen.
This is an AI-generated summary. Read the original article at: https://decrypt.co/381202/chinese-startup-stepfun-phone-ai-agent