StepX Neo: Chinese startup announced the world’s first “agent” AI smartphone

A little-known Chinese company StepFun, founded in 2023 by former Microsoft employees, announced the creation of a smartphone called StepX Neo. According to the developers, this is the world’s first “agent” device based on artificial intelligence. The announcement came before OpenAI unveiled its own potential smartphone project.

StepFun already has experience working with AI on devices, providing service integrations for brands like Oppo and Geely. The name of the new product, StepX Neo, raises questions, since it is phonetically consonant with other well-known projects, but the manufacturer is relying on its software developments.

What is AI Agentic Phone from StepFun?

The smartphone is based on the Step AOS operating system and uses a personal “smart agent” called Step Amoo. The system is focused on solving three critical problems of AI agents: memory, decision making and command execution. According to the manufacturer, the time for retrieving data from the agent’s memory is only 15 ms. The main focus is on autonomous execution of tasks in offline mode.

AI workflows are distributed between local processing and cloud computing for more complex tasks, while the company emphasizes that personal data remains inside the smartphone.

Technical characteristics and software features

The Step Edge LLM model is used to process data on the device. StepFun claims to rank first in 29 unnamed industry benchmarks. There is still little information regarding the Step AOS operating system: it is stated that it is a combination of Android, Linux and RTOS, but outwardly it may only be a shell for Android.

Known hardware features

• Back panel design with LED matrix, reminiscent of Nothing devices.
• Partnership with a number of major Chinese services, including Alipay, Baidu, Didi and Meituan.
• Currently, the technical specifications of the device have not been officially disclosed.

Should we expect a new product?

At the moment, the project is at the stage of marketing hype. Despite the loud claims of being the “first agent phone”, it is not yet clear whether we will see a full-fledged commercial product or this is an attempt to attract industry attention to a small Chinese AI developer.