TECNO is exploring how mobile AI can be tailored to fit specific professional workflows through a new collaboration with Digital Trends Media Group. The company has demonstrated four customized AI workflows built around the needs of technology journalists and digital content creators, using its experimental EllaClaw mobile AI agent. Announced on September 23 in Hong Kong, the showcase highlights TECNO’s efforts to make AI more practical for real-world tasks instead of relying only on a fixed set of features. 

TECNO EllaClaw Focuses on Customizable Mobile AI

EllaClaw is described by TECNO as an exploratory mobile Agentic AI system that can adapt to different professions, industries, and user requirements. Instead of working as an autopilot that takes over tasks, TECNO positions it as a digital co-pilot that helps users complete repetitive work while keeping important decisions under human control.

The Digital Trends collaboration was created to explore how this approach could work in professional content creation. The resulting workflows cover several stages of the process, from researching a developing story to preparing content for publication and social media.

Four Workflows for Content Creators

The first workflow, News Background Research, allows users to share a developing story with EllaClaw. The agent can identify the topic, search selected trusted sources, and organize the findings into a structured brief. The research can include historical context, key developments, stakeholder perspectives, and source references. The resulting brief can be saved to the phone’s Notes app, while an audio version allows users to listen to the research.

The second workflow, Research-to-Script, takes the gathered information and turns it into structured storyboards. It can provide multilingual script suggestions, supporting creative assets and content-planning assistance. This is designed to connect the stages of idea generation, research, storyboarding and production without requiring users to move between several different apps.

Personalized Writing and Social Media Checks

EllaClaw also includes a Personal Writing Style workflow. Users can provide writing samples, which the AI analyzes to create a reusable style profile. The profile can then be applied when generating content for different platforms. TECNO says the profile can continue to evolve through new writing samples, feedback and ongoing interaction.

The fourth workflow, Social Media Risk-Word Check, reviews content before publication. It checks copy against platform-specific publishing considerations and helps identify potentially risky wording. The goal is to reduce publishing risks while keeping the original message effective.

Human Control Remains Central

TECNO says user control, transparency and privacy are important parts of the EllaClaw experience. Users remain responsible for reviewing, refining and approving AI-generated content before publication. This keeps creative decisions and editorial judgment with the person using the system.

Although the demonstration focused on technology journalists and content creators, TECNO says the same concept could be adapted for other professions, industries and personal workflows. The showcase therefore presents EllaClaw as an example of how mobile Agentic AI could become more personalized and practical, while still keeping human creativity and decision-making at the center.

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Artificial intelligence on smartphones is entering a new phase. According to Counterpoint Research, the industry is moving beyond AI assistants that simply answer questions and toward “Agent Phones” that can understand a user’s intent and complete tasks automatically. Instead of opening apps one by one, future smartphones are expected to coordinate multiple apps and services in the background, making everyday tasks faster and easier. This shift could redefine how people interact with their devices and how smartphone brands compete in the years ahead.

From AI Assistants to AI Agents

Today’s AI assistants are mainly designed to respond to questions, generate text, or provide recommendations. Counterpoint believes the next step is far more practical. Agent Phones are designed to understand what users want to achieve and then carry out the necessary actions automatically.

Rather than asking users to switch between several apps, these AI agents can manage complete workflows on their behalf. This changes the smartphone from a device that launches apps into an intelligent operating system layer that coordinates apps and services behind the scenes. As a result, future competition may depend less on hardware specifications and more on how reliably AI can complete real-world tasks.

Open Frameworks Are Accelerating the Shift

One of the biggest drivers behind this transition is the emergence of open “Claw” frameworks. These frameworks provide a shared execution layer that allows AI agents to understand user intent, execute multi-step tasks, and work across different applications.

Counterpoint highlights OpenClaw as a leading open-source framework in this space. Because these frameworks are openly available, smartphone manufacturers no longer need to build complete AI agent systems from scratch. This reduces development costs and engineering complexity, making advanced AI features more accessible across different smartphone price segments.

Agent-to-Agent Communication Improves Automation

Another important development is Agent-to-Agent (A2A) communication. Instead of relying on a single AI assistant, multiple AI agents can communicate with one another, share information, delegate responsibilities, and coordinate workflows.

This approach helps remove traditional app boundaries, allowing different services to work together more smoothly. The result is a more seamless experience where users spend less time manually managing apps and more time letting the phone handle routine tasks.

Smartphone Competition Is Changing

Counterpoint believes the smartphone industry is entering a new stage where AI execution matters more than standalone AI features or benchmark scores. Future devices are expected to compete on factors such as task execution quality, contextual understanding, ecosystem integration, intelligent automation, and overall reliability.

The research also outlines two different paths toward agentification. Internet companies are likely to build AI agents around their existing app ecosystems, while smartphone manufacturers are expected to integrate system-native AI agents directly into the operating system for deeper control over device functions and cross-app interactions.

TECNO EllaClaw 

Counterpoint points to TECNO’s EllaClaw as an example of how this new approach can work in practice. Built using the Ella AI framework, the open-source OpenClaw platform, and Agent-to-Agent architecture, EllaClaw transforms a traditional AI assistant into an AI agent capable of completing tasks across multiple applications.

Its features include cross-app task execution and a one-tap phone caretaker that helps address battery drain, excessive data usage, device maintenance, and routine optimization. TECNO also focuses on solving practical problems for users, particularly in emerging markets, instead of concentrating only on AI model size or benchmark performance.

What’s Next?

Counterpoint believes the future of smartphones lies in practical AI that can complete tasks instead of simply responding to prompts. As open frameworks such as OpenClaw become more widely adopted, agentic AI is expected to expand beyond premium flagship devices and reach mainstream smartphones. In the coming years, the most successful AI phones may not be those with the largest AI models, but those that deliver the most useful, reliable, and intelligent everyday experiences.

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TECNO has unveiled the next stage of development for EllaClaw, its beta-stage mobile AI agent designed to make smartphones more intelligent and proactive. Announced on June 24, 2026, EllaClaw goes beyond traditional voice assistants by completing everyday tasks across apps, optimizing device performance, and providing personalized assistance. The company says its goal is to make advanced AI practical, accessible, and useful for everyday users, especially in emerging markets.

EllaClaw Brings Practical Agentic AI to Smartphones

Unlike conventional AI assistants that mainly respond to commands, EllaClaw is a cloud-based AI agent that can understand requests, plan actions, and complete tasks on a user’s behalf. It works proactively in the background to simplify complex workflows while keeping users informed about every action it performs.

TECNO says EllaClaw is designed to automate real-world tasks instead of simply answering questions, making smartphones more capable of handling everyday activities with minimal user effort.

Cross-App Intelligence Simplifies Everyday Tasks

One of EllaClaw’s biggest upgrades is its cross-app intelligence. Instead of relying on direct integrations, the AI understands graphical user interfaces (GUI), allowing it to navigate supported third-party apps much like a human user.

With user permission, EllaClaw can interact with shopping, transportation, food delivery, and smart home apps. It performs actions visibly on the screen so users can follow every step, providing greater transparency and confidence in AI-driven automation.

AI Optimizes Phone Performance with 40+ Smart Skills

EllaClaw also works as an intelligent device management assistant by monitoring and optimizing battery life, mobile data, storage, RAM, and CPU performance.

TECNO has introduced more than 40 Smart Skills to improve everyday smartphone usage. Smart CleanUp Boost frees RAM, optimizes CPU resources, and reduces system lag for smoother performance. Smart Power Drain Check detects apps that consume excessive battery and optimizes background activity to extend battery life.

The AI also includes Instant Cool-down Relief, which lowers device temperature during heavy workloads by managing background processes, while Smart Data Guardian tracks mobile data usage, learns personal usage habits, and helps users avoid excessive data consumption. TECNO says this feature is particularly useful in regions where mobile data plans remain limited.

Personalized Assistance for Daily Life

EllaClaw becomes more personalized through persistent memory, allowing it to learn user habits and preferences over time.

Its Morning Briefing combines calendar events, travel itineraries, weather updates, and curated news into a single overview. The Trip Prep Assistant helps organize travel schedules, book rides, set departure alarms, and prepare actionable travel plans before users leave.

TECNO has also added relationship-focused features that remind users to contact family members or partners, notify them about weather changes that could affect plans, and provide contextual reminders for daily activities.

Shopping, Ride Booking, and Smart Home Control

EllaClaw extends its capabilities through several cross-app AI experiences. Users can book transportation using natural language with One-Sentence Ride Hailing, while Shopping Buddy searches for products and compares options across shopping platforms such as Lazada.

The AI can also monitor connected smart home devices, provide status updates, and support smart home routines, allowing users to manage multiple connected devices through a single intelligent assistant.

Privacy and User Control Come First

TECNO says EllaClaw follows a confirmation-first privacy model. The AI asks for user approval before making important system changes or accessing supported applications, ensuring users remain in full control of their devices.

The assistant also performs actions visibly instead of silently in the background, allowing users to see exactly what it is doing. Supported apps require secure opt-in permissions before EllaClaw can access them.

Availability

TECNO says EllaClaw is currently undergoing internal testing and is available only as a closed beta. The company describes it as an exploratory AI concept and plans to announce additional features and broader availability in future updates.

With cross-app automation, system-level device optimization, more than 40 Smart Skills, and personalized assistance, TECNO is positioning EllaClaw as a practical mobile AI agent rather than a traditional chatbot. By combining proactive task automation with transparent, confirmation-first privacy controls, the company aims to make advanced AI more useful for everyday smartphone users while ensuring they remain in complete control of their devices.

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Key Highlights:

• Alibaba launches Qwen-3.5 with open and closed versions
  
• 60% cheaper and 8× stronger at handling large workloads
  
• Built for the emerging “agentic AI” era
  

Alibaba Unveils Qwen-3.5 Ahead of Lunar New Year

Alibaba Cloud has introduced its next-generation AI model family, Qwen-3.5, just ahead of the Lunar New Year. The launch is part of a broader wave of new flagship AI releases from major Chinese developers. The models are available through Alibaba Cloud’s Model Studio and are designed to strengthen China’s position in the global AI race.

Two Models, Different Strategies

The company released Qwen-3.5-Open-Source, a 397-billion-parameter model whose weights are publicly available on Hugging Face and ModelScope. Alibaba claims it outperforms its earlier trillion-parameter model while matching leading systems from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind.

Qwen-3.5-Plus remains closed-source and offers a 1-million-token context window, targeting enterprise customers and large deployments.

Built for the Agentic AI Era

Alibaba says Qwen-3.5 is 60% cheaper to use and delivers eight times better performance on large workloads compared to its predecessor. It includes multimodal features, understanding text, images, audio, and video. The model also introduces “visual agentic capabilities,” allowing it to operate mobile and desktop apps and complete multi-step tasks independently.

Intensifying Chinese AI Competition

Qwen competes with Chinese rivals such as ByteDance’s Doubao and DeepSeek. With expanded support for 201 languages and growing global downloads, Alibaba’s latest release signals rising competition between Chinese AI leaders.

Impact on Global AI Leaders

The launch of Qwen-3.5 increases competitive pressure on global AI leaders like OpenAI (ChatGPT), Anthropic (Claude), and xAI (Grok). While it may not immediately reduce their global user base, it strengthens China’s domestic alternatives and expands open-weight adoption worldwide. If Qwen delivers similar performance at lower cost, it could attract developers, startups, and enterprises looking for cheaper large-context models.

However, brand trust, ecosystem integration, and enterprise partnerships still give US firms a strong advantage outside China. In short, it may not disrupt them overnight, but it clearly raises the competitive stakes.

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HIGHLIGHTS:

• ByteDance and ZTE are developing a second-generation Agentic AI, Doubao phone, for a planned late-2026 launch.
  
• The first AI phone sold out quickly but was limited to around 30,000 units as an engineering test.
  
• ByteDance aims to expand Doubao AI across third-party smartphones rather than build its own hardware long-term.
• The company’s OS-level agentic AI ambitions position it as a potential challenger to Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, and other major smartphone ecosystems.

Early Prototype Sold Out After Limited Release

ByteDance’s first AI-powered smartphone, built with ZTE and running the company’s Doubao agentic assistant, sold out rapidly in China. The device, ZTE Nubia M153, was marketed as an engineering prototype rather than a commercial product. According to industry sources, the initial batch consisted of roughly 30,000 units, designed mainly to test real-world performance. Despite the limited supply, consumer interest was strong, with resale prices rising more than 40% above retail.

Why ByteDance Released a Prototype Instead of a Full Product

The company intentionally treated the first phone as a market experiment. The goal was to evaluate Doubao’s system-level automation, including cross-app operations such as ticket booking, restaurant reservations, price comparison, and complex task coordination. The feedback from this early batch will inform the design and capabilities of future devices.

App Restrictions After Privacy and Control Concerns

Shortly after launch, the phone faced nationwide pushback from major Chinese apps. Several high-usage platforms blocked or limited the Doubao assistant, citing concerns over fairness, data access, and the device’s ability to control apps at an OS level. This reflected growing industry unease about agentic AI performing actions across apps without traditional API permissions, an issue that drew wide scrutiny in earlier reporting.

New Second-Gen AI Phone Targeted for Late 2026

ByteDance and ZTE are now jointly developing a second-generation smartphone, with a planned launch window in late 2026. This upcoming version is reportedly more mature in both hardware and AI integration. The shift to next-generation development has led to the halt of production for the current prototype.

ByteDance’s Long-Term Hardware Strategy

Despite entering the smartphone market with these early models, ByteDance says it does not plan to become a long-term phone manufacturer. Instead, it wants Doubao to operate as an OS-level AI layer that other smartphone makers can adopt. However, analysts at Morgan Stanley and IDC warn that partnering with major OEMs may be challenging, as brands like Apple, Huawei, and Xiaomi are expected to rely on their own AI systems.

Why ByteDance Is Entering the AI Phone Market

ByteDance, best known worldwide for TikTok and its Chinese counterpart Douyin, is not a traditional hardware company. Its push into AI phones is driven by the need to test and scale agentic AI directly at the operating-system level. Working with partners like ZTE allows ByteDance to control the device environment, sharpen Doubao’s automation features, and demonstrate its capabilities to potential OEM collaborators, all without any plan to become a permanent phone manufacturer.

Future Opportunities and Challenges 

IDC predicts ByteDance may struggle to secure top-tier hardware partners by 2026, potentially limiting Doubao’s reach despite 159 million MAUs. Still, the company sees strong opportunities for app developers and enterprise vendors, particularly in e-commerce, travel, payments, and food delivery sectors that can benefit from Doubao’s cross-app orchestration. 

On the other hand, ByteDance’s Volcano Engine, already handling nearly half of China’s public-cloud LLM API calls, positions the company well for broader AI ecosystem expansion.

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(via)

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Key Highlights:

• ByteDance’s new agentic AI smartphone faces major pushback from major Chinese apps over security and fairness concerns.
  
• The company has restricted its AI agent, Doubao, after reports of blocked logins, account freezes, and privacy worries.
  
• The launch reveals both the promise and risks of fully autonomous AI systems that can control a device like a human.
  

ByteDance’s Agentic AI Smartphone Faces Major Pushback Across China

ByteDance’s ambitious new AI smartphone, the Nubia M153, is drawing significant resistance from major Chinese platforms, prompting the company to roll back several of its most advanced features. Powered by Doubao, an agentic AI capable of operating the phone like a human, this device was meant to showcase the future of autonomous mobile computing. Instead, it has triggered a wave of concerns over security, fairness, and user privacy.

Major Chinese Apps Push Back

Leading platforms, including Alipay, Pinduoduo, and Taobao, have restricted or blocked Doubao’s automated operations. These companies cite issues such as unfair engagement, potential misuse, and risks to financial security. Some users reported that their accounts were frozen shortly after the AI performed tasks inside sensitive apps, even when they logged in manually.

Only a handful of major apps, including Meituan and ByteDance’s own Douyin, continue to work normally with the AI assistant.

ByteDance Restricts Doubao’s Powers

In response, ByteDance has scaled back Doubao’s capabilities. The AI can no longer interact with financial apps, claim user incentives, or operate competitive games where automated play could offer unfair advantages. The most significant restriction concerns WeChat: users experienced app crashes and suspensions, leading ByteDance to temporarily disable Doubao’s ability to control it.

The company says it is now working with developers to set clearer rules to avoid blanket bans.

Privacy Concerns Add to User Hesitation

ByteDance insists that the phone does not store screen data on its servers and that users’ activity is not used to train AI models. Still, many early adopters remain cautious. Doubao’s “global memory,” which allows it to remember tasks across apps, has heightened worries about device-level surveillance and unintended data exposure.

Real-World Challenges

The Nubia M153 made headlines after viral demos showed Doubao navigating apps visually, scrolling, typing, posting content, and completing multi-step tasks without step-by-step commands. The system’s full-stack control surpassed traditional assistants like Siri or Google Assistant, which rely on limited API calls.

But the same power that excited AI enthusiasts also alarmed regulators, app developers, and ordinary users.

Future Plans and Industry Impact

ByteDance stresses that the Nubia M153 is a “technology preview” priced at 3,499 yuan, mainly for industry professionals. The company plans to license Doubao to more smartphone brands after refining safety controls. The episode highlights a larger industry shift as tech companies worldwide, like Apple, Google, and OpenAI, race to build action-capable AI assistants.

For now, ByteDance’s phone demonstrates both the potential and the pitfalls of giving AI near-human control over a device. As the debate continues, the industry faces a defining question: how much autonomy should AI really have?

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(via)

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