According to Lanjing News, Honor is currently in talks with ByteDance regarding the "Doubao Phone" collaboration, indicating that the joint exploration between the two companies in the AI terminal field may further deepen.
It was reported that before ByteDance's previous collaboration with ZTE Communications to launch the first generation of Doubao Phones, its earliest partner was Honor. However, Honor took a cautious approach at the time, with core concerns about the potential risks brought by system-level deep integration: as an exploratory engineering machine, the Doubao Phone could adopt a more radical technical approach, while Honor, targeting hundreds of millions of users, might face widespread functional abnormalities and user complaints if issues arose in stability, compatibility, or security, making it difficult to bear such risks.
Despite this, both sides have accumulated multiple rounds of cooperation in the AI field. In June 2024, Honor was the first to integrate the Doubao large model, supporting functions such as document Q&A, meeting minutes, and content generation; in October 2025, Honor released the Magic8 series equipped with MagicOS 10 and further collaborated with Yitu Engine, a subsidiary of ByteDance, to promote the implementation of AI capabilities at the system level.
In terms of technical direction, Honor's management has also expressed support for the "Doubao Phone" initiative. In December 2025, Fang Fei, President of Honor's product line, stated that the Doubao Phone assistant, based on UI Agent, can perform tasks automatically across general scenarios, aligning with Honor's evolution from single-function AI to generalized execution, reflecting a convergence in intelligent interaction paradigms between the two companies.
This round of discussions reflects that collaborations between leading smartphone manufacturers and large model platforms are moving from application integration toward system-level integration. As AI agent capabilities gradually mature, the balance between innovation and risk control by terminal manufacturers will become a key factor determining the depth and pace of collaboration.
