StepFun Phone Is the Surrender Faction

"The Connection Sage Has Lost Its Powers"

My first impression of the StepFun phone was that it's cheap — 3,999 yuan, a full 2,000 yuan cheaper than the Doubao's lowest configuration.

But the StepFun specs are mediocre too: 16GB RAM, only 256GB storage, and a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip.

The Doubao phone's base model has 12GB RAM, 512GB storage, and a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 — the premium version.

The first-gen StepFun phone logo looks like this:

It's basically Anthropic's reincarnated spirit child, banking on Dario not being able to file an IP lawsuit.

Then 100 days later, Anthropic became Star Man 👇

Ah, what a shame. Guess Anthropic flexed its muscles. Americans, so devious.

Whatever, the logo doesn't matter. Let's look at the actual device.

Opening it up looks roughly like this, pure Nothing Phone aesthetic:

From the registration flow, the StepFun phone has quite a few small bugs.

I had to register three times. Each time it got stuck on the completion screen, and when I reopened it I had to re-record my "Amoo, Amoo" voiceprint. Logging into StepFun AI was the same — inexplicably stuck on the emergency contact screen, completely frozen.

And occasionally, it just straight-up crashes:

Whatever, they've never made a phone before, I choose to forgive. I'm mainly spending this foolish money to see the phone's AI capabilities.

First up, the highest-frequency use case: food delivery. I copied my exact request to Meituan's Xiaomei: order a plate of stir-fried pork with chili peppers delivered to the nearest Netfish Esports near me.

It first said my Alipay wasn't updated to the latest version, but I checked and it was already the latest. So I had it use Flash Purchase, which showed service unavailable.

Fine, let's use Meituan. Then it said it only had access to Meituan Errands.

What does this mean? It means every food order I place not only can't use discount coupons, but I also have to pay an extra errand fee on top? Is this the AI tax?

I'm already somewhat speechless. But since I'm here, I paid the errand fee to see if I could summon a rider.

As expected... it failed...

My assessment: far worse than Meituan's Xiaomei. Every time I travel and stay at a hotel next to a Netfish Internet café, Xiaomei can handle food delivery just fine.

So has StepFun actually connected with Taobao, Alipay, and Meituan?

My assessment: connected in name only.

So-called Meituan integration doesn't necessarily mean integration with food delivery, in-store services, hotels, Xiaoxiang Supermarket, and other main services. Alipay integration doesn't mean integration with payments — it mainly means integration with Abao, which nobody uses.

"Integration" is a matter of framing. I hope everyone grasps this deeply.

Next, buying flight tickets. I asked Amoo to book a flight from Beijing to Quanzhou next Wednesday, departing from Beijing Capital Airport, afternoon or evening, with five options listed.

This time it was decent — the options were honest and clear, very ByteDance in style.

However, when I asked Amoo to directly place the order for me, it said it couldn't complete the purchase on my behalf, and I'd have to jump back to Trip.com to actually book 😭 Same story with hotels.

Are you kidding me? I could've opened Trip.com and finished booking in that time. So connecting to Trip.com's browsing interface counts as integration now.

Then there's DiDi ride-hailing — mostly fine, since even the Light Sail earbuds can manage that. But I don't understand why, when I said I wanted to go to the nearest Netfish Internet café, it added Luckin Coffee as an extra destination.

Want me to grab a coffee to perk up before gaming?

Is anyone still human?

I saw comments calling this the Doubao phone's biggest competitor. That's pure nonsense.

Because whatever the Doubao phone can't do, StepFun basically can't do either — and it definitely can't pull off hardcore moves like automatically farming Douyin Lite coins for me.

Testing the StepFun phone reminded me of testing Light Sail. I genuinely don't understand: with such trash hardware and a 90% failure rate in real-world testing, what's the point of launching a product like this?

After all, useless software just wastes time — buying hardware actually costs thousands of yuan.

Another focus of this StepFun phone launch is the Amoo Store, which serves as an homage to the App Store. The gist is letting everyone use AI to build new apps.

Honestly it feels like humanities-major vibe coding — its only real use is posting on Xiaohongshu, with some content value.

The AI app ecosystem is still pretty empty at this point.

The StepFun AI phone being so underwhelming is likely related to StepFun choosing the A2A (Agent to Agent) route.

Currently there are two routes for AI phones. One is the GUI route that Doubao phone takes, mainly having AI look at the screen like a human + simulate finger taps to operate apps. The advantage is generalizability and being able to pull off creative tricks. The downside is that other companies can deem you an external plugin and ban you entirely.

StepFun chose A2A, mainly having its own Agent control other companies' Agents.

For example, if Meituan opened up its food delivery, a user wanting to order food through the StepFun phone would have Amoo call out to the other side's Xiaomei to place the order.

Honestly, this route completely depends on the other party's generosity. It's the capitulationist faction.

And if other apps were actually generous, they'd definitely open up to all AI phones (like Doubao, HONOR, and Xiaomi) — there's no reason to exclusively open up for StepFun. Unless they think StepFun won't sell many units and can use it as an experimental field.

Another problem with A2A is the low success rate, because it depends not only on StepFun's own Agent capabilities but also the other party's.

When I ask Amoo to order food on Meituan, Amoo has a failure rate, and Meituan's Xiaomei also has a failure rate — these failure rates compound.

So even if Amoo's side works fine, you still have to consider the other side's Agent intelligence level. What if Alipay's Abao is intellectually challenged and can't figure out how to invoke anything?

Some people say the Doubao phone worked for a year and got banned by 100+ apps, while StepFun has nearly 100 apps in its ecosystem, so StepFun is impressive. That's complete nonsense — it's just that other companies are willing to accept StepFun's route.

Of course, the problems these AI phones are facing now can't all be blamed on them — there's also the issue of traditional apps themselves.

Apps like DiDi have never had problems being invoked by AI because DiDi is pure consumer-side logic. For them, AI phones are just a new channel, and integrating only brings benefits.

But Meituan is different — besides making money from users ordering food, part of their revenue comes from advertising fees charged to merchants.

If AI really helps users order food, and users don't open Meituan, how do they sell merchant advertising?

This probably causes internal department brawls. I suspect this is also part of why Meituan's Xiaomei has remained half-dead — the more people use Xiaomei, the less revenue the merchant side might generate.

Just like Taobao AI would never one-click give you the optimal discount stacking solution, because the whole point of designing those convoluted coupons is to make them impossible to figure out. Otherwise what would the Double Eleven discount team even do for a living — just fire them and distribute their salaries to the "family" instead?

To summarize the current state of AI phones: GUI gets boycotted by major tech companies one after another; A2A mainly relies on the founder's connections and the other party's mercy.

As for which route is better, GUI or A2A, both currently look like roadside attractions. I also saw on Jike an evaluation of specific routes by Thomas Bai, host of Brainwave, which I'll share here:

"GUI Agent is like humanoid robots. Why make robots human-shaped? There was enormous controversy and discussion in the early days, and debate continues to this day. But if you want robots to enter human society and use tools made for humans, the most universal form is humanoid.

Similarly, if you want Agents to enter phones and computers and use apps and tools made for humans, the most universal form isn't CLI — it's GUI."

Another feeling I have is that AI phones really should be built together with Personal Agent. Directly talking to your phone to order food or book flights is cooler than opening Grok bot or Muse.

But the person responsible for Agent at StepFun is Shi Kaiwen — the guy who previously got a term sheet from dollar VCs then urgently withdrew and played everyone.

He first raised money from Sequoia and Jinqiu Fund at a $100 million valuation, then with help from former universe-number-one FA Farsighted Capital, directly asked for $500 million.

Not sure if he failed to raise the $500 million or what, but anyway, before Sequoia and Jinqiu's money even arrived, he directly joined StepFun.

Melvin Chen back when he had a few thousand yuan in the company account didn't abandon ship. Tian Keyu, under such enormous public pressure now, hasn't run away either. This Shi Kaiwen guy has zero entrepreneurial resilience — entrepreneurs who ghost investors are truly rare in the venture capital market.

So honestly, the more I look at Qi Junyuan, the more I feel he and the StepFun phone are a perfect match.

I also saw Today AI put out PR yesterday saying AI application companies should be model companies — then they really should join StepFun!

Too bad Today AI has already raised $200 million, the biggest result among this wave of Personal Agent startups, and is already on the path of transcending models.

Beyond the phone itself, my bigger confusion about StepFun is: how important is the StepFun phone in the StepFun ecosystem? If they're really determined to go down the Personal Agent path, how much effort still needs to go into the model side? Will they still pursue the upper limits of intelligence alongside Moonshot AI, MiniMax, and Zhipu AI?

Thinking of this, my heart holds only blessings for Brother Yin ❤️

Finally, I saw that StepFun's showcased ecosystem friends include Zhuanzhuan.

So I won't hold back: "Amoo, Amoo, help me call a technician on Zhuanzhuan to come pick you up for recycling."

Unfortunately, it said it wasn't connected to Zhuanzhuan. So I went old-school and called a technician on Zhuanzhuan myself. When the technician arrived, he told me, "We don't take this," because there was no StepFun AI phone option in their recycling categories.

Aren't you guys homies 😭

(This article's cover image was generated by ChatGPT; purely human-written)

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