A viral complaint about AI-powered restaurant reservations has drawn a public response from Nubia president Ni Fei, who says the regular Doubao app may not support real-world bookings yet, but a Doubao phone with deeper system integration can handle that kind of task.
The debate started after a user in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu said she tried to reserve a table through Doubao and was turned away at the restaurant. A staff member reportedly told her that the venue does not accept reservations made through Doubao, while customer service for the app said the platform currently does not support actual restaurant booking and cannot pass private chat content to third parties.
That quickly reignited a familiar argument around AI hallucinations. Critics said the case showed how large language models can sound confident even when they cannot actually complete an action in the real world.
Ni Fei addressed the issue in a video response. He said the standalone app may still lack true booking support, but a Nubia handset with the built-in Nubia AI assistant can execute a full cross-app flow. In his demo, he used voice commands on a Nubia M153 engineering device to filter nearby restaurants, choose a venue, set a reservation for five people at 6 p.m. the next day, and complete the booking through a local lifestyle service platform.
His argument was that practical mobile AI depends on whether the assistant can reach the final service endpoint rather than stopping at chat-based suggestions. In other words, it is not enough for the model to recommend a restaurant if it cannot actually carry out the reservation.
The Nubia M153 is a co-developed prototype from ZTE and ByteDance. It integrates the assistant at the system level, uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite platform, comes with 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage, and packs a 6.78-inch LTPO display plus a 6000mAh battery with 90W wired and 15W wireless charging. The model was previously sold in limited quantities in China and has been informally described as a dedicated Doubao phone.
The broader point from Nubia is clear: AI on phones becomes more useful when it can string together multiple apps and complete the task instead of merely talking about it. Whether users buy that explanation is another matter, but the incident does highlight how much real-world execution still matters in mobile AI.
