Step Terminal launches its first Agent phone, the STEPXNeo—makers first.

Step Terminal’s first “Agent Phone” STEPX Neo officially launched, makers lead the way

I stared at it for a couple of seconds at first glance.

This is definitely a physical‑world Agent!

The whole device is built around a “retro‑future aesthetic” design language, with a frosted‑glass back panel that blends early computers, cyber circuits, AI civilization symbols, and modern consumer‑electronics craftsmanship into one.

Large‑area membrane textures represent the reasoning, computing, and memory systems, naturally linked by circuit patterns and transparent layers. Components like the chip and battery, usually sealed tightly in the rear cover, are displayed openly for all to see.

The five Easter eggs—“42”, “user_potential” code, Turing test binary, Deep Blue checkerboard, and the Transformer architecture—link together the AI exploration history from sci‑fi imagination and breakthroughs in machine intelligence to the development of large models.

In my friend’s own words:

Very heavy‑duty, very geeky.

But the thing that really hits me is the small screen on the upper right side of the back.

This is the work status area of the built‑in personal AI agent Step Amoo(I usually call it A‑boy).

It occasionally peeks out a little eye, flashes various status icons when running background tasks, supports custom text, and has countless Easter eggs.

It’s basically maxing out the social aspect, now who doesn’t know I got a new phone!

Of course, for a smart phone, it must have a side AI button, and the color is equally eye‑catching.

Tap lightly to bring up the input box, long‑press for direct voice communication, finally no more digging through a sea of apps on the home screen.

The exterior may look geeky enough, but whether a phone can truly be called a native intelligent-agent phone ultimately depends on whether the system’s core actually contains the real thing.

So, power on!!

Always‑ready A‑boy

In the past, voice assistants on phones were basically one‑way search engines: you ask a question, it gives an answer.

The STEPX Neo preview edition runs the native intelligent‑agent operating system Step AOS, which completely changes the logic.

At the system level it supports Loop iterative execution, autonomous Tool Calls, and can invoke various Skills and MCP tools, capabilities that are very close to what we command Codex or Claude Code on a computer.

But in everyday use, it’s as simple as personal assistants like Muse, optimized specifically for consumers, and A‑Zai has strong personality traits, actively leveraging system capabilities to interact with users.

STEPX Neo features dual entry points: swipe right to enter the Amoo‑exclusive system‑level space, swipe left to return to the familiar phone home screen. The fun part is the bottom of the screen.

iOS usually places a search capsule or Dock bar at the bottom, but in Step AOS, a tiny collapsible panel resides permanently at the bottom.

Tap it casually, and you get a system‑level Agent task navigation bar, where you can see all the long‑chain tasks that A‑Zai is currently pushing in the background, as well as the history of previous tasks.

When will A‑Zai proactively reach out to you?

When a step requires confirmation, it will pop up a prompt; after a task finishes, it will organize the results and proactively push them to you.

Of course, the coolest part is still the back screen—you can see A’s work status directly.

Thinking, Tool Call, Output… these fields that used to exist only on UI pages are now appearing in the physical world.

Can’t resist the urge—have to get hands‑on and play with it.

But, usually I’m vibing on the computer, working on office‑efficiency features, and suddenly switching to a mobile scenario, I really have no idea what to do.

I was still racking my brain, then I turned around and saw,hey, why is there already something ready-made??

Yes, A‑Zai comes with a skill portal that contains a variety of polished skills you can just install and play with.

For example, skills like resume analysis and data analysis.

But to be honest, I’ve always felt that a phone isn’t really suited for office‑productivity tasks; its greatest value lies in everyday life scenarios.

So after some wandering, I chose this app called “All‑Purpose English Assistant” and installed it.

A‑Zai instantly upgraded to a personal English tutor; looking up words and breaking down complex sentences are basic skills, but the most useful feature is—

it can create a study plan based on the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve.

Tears in my eyes, reminiscing about the days of grinding through vocabulary books for the graduate exam—now I can afford the good stuff.

But honestly, memorizing words through a dialog box feels pretty odd,who spends all day opening a dialog box to call a Skill…

So I installed the Feishu CLI and directly gave A‑Zai a command: generate a scheduled task for the new words I need to learn each day, automatically sync it to my Feishu calendar, and write the new word details as notes.

After a single operation, the system, tools, and third‑party interfaces are all connected, and it relies entirely on backend tool calls and scripts without any simulated clicks, so it’s very fast.

It fits perfectly into my existing SOP, so every morning when I check the day’s tasks, I can conveniently review vocabulary.

By the way, besides Skills, you can also install Agents directly from the community.

Compared to a standalone Skill, it’s packaged a bit better; the bundle also includes files like SOUL and AGENTS, can run independently, and even combine calls to SKILL.

My favorite is this guy, “DJ Agent”.

It’s so abstract—once installed, your phone instantly becomes a pocket DJ console, ready to pull out at any gathering, guaranteeing you become the center of attention.(just kidding).

AI Maker’s Block Box

Why is the desktop Agent so powerful, yet on traditional phones the Agent still seems unable to do anything?

The core lies in a different first principle: the phone OS is built around “human taps on a graphical interface.”

When an Agent wants to act across apps, it relies on clumsy visual recognition and simulated GUI clicks. If the page changes slightly or a permission popup appears, the entire task chain breaks instantly.

STEPX Neo takes a different route, A‑Zai is a native system component in Step AOS.

The model, operating system, and hardware perception collaborate at the low level, allowing the Agent to call system capabilities directly instead of floating on the top of the screen blindly.

Of course, having just a low‑level channel is definitely not enough.

Consumer‑facing daily needs are extremely long‑tail; no matter how powerful an agent is, it can’t magically handle ticket booking, ride‑hailing, payments, editing, and other scenarios without ecosystem support—you won’t get the tools without it.

That’s hardly an intelligent agent at all—it’s not smart in the slightest.

But STEPX Neo seems to be a bit different.

When you open your phone, you’ll find that various common service ecosystems are already set up. In the agent’s Tool Call execution process, you can directly invoke the corresponding functions in multiple ways, such as Skills, for tasks like ride‑hailing or coupon collection.

Yes, STEPX Neo has already pre‑packaged many high‑frequency scenarios into system‑level tools for you.

And the apps that act as service providers also support A‑Zai.

The Step terminal connects with third‑party ecosystems through various intelligent agent protocols such as A2A, MCP, etc., and also introduces H2A2A (Human to Host Agent to Service Agent), meaning the user expresses a request to Step Amoo, which then invokes a specialized service agent to complete the task.

With this foundation, external ecosystems can connect directly, opening professional services to terminal scheduling.

At this point, we have to mention another heavyweight weapon brought by the stepwise edge—Step Studio.

It is an AI-native development tool for terminals, providing a dedicated software workspace for writing, testing, and managing code, with built‑in powerful AI capabilities that help developers work faster and smarter.

In the past, adding a new capability to a phone required developing a massive app from scratch; the emergence of agents like Codex lowered the barrier to creating features, but they remained confined to the desktop, and many tasks still had to revolve around the web.

Now, with the support of Step Studio and Step AOS, phones can finally be tinkered with by makers.

It natively includes various connectors; developers only need to write a SKILL.MD, and can directly glue agents, external APIs, and phone system capabilities together.

This finally solved my real‑world constipation(bushi).

Earlier I was browsing the community and discovered that no one even cares about AI‑circle news on a smart‑agent phone!

What a pity, I’ll just whip up a “Daily Chair Explosion” APP(bushi).

It’s just a simple vertical feed app; in Step Studio, Step 5 Preview, it was completed quickly.

The built‑in preview page on the right lets you try it out or comment and edit directly here; what you see in the code is what you get.

After testing with no issues, push it straight to a real device for testing.

It’s also very convenient; no need to scan any QR code. As long as you’re logged into the same account, STEPX Neo can see everything you create in Step Studio.

Just download the APK installation package.

The app icon is also very cool, perfectly fitting my “nuclear bomb” design concept.

Bang, just open it and it works, exactly the same preview effect as in Step Studio, click to view the original text.

Tears, from now on I won’t even need to scroll through public accounts early in the morning,just lying in bed I can watch “Atomic Bomb Explosion,” so conveniently lazyo(╥﹏╥)o.

But if you want, Step Studio can also craft Agents and Skills, and similarly invoke the mobile connector; after the cloud model is ready, it can be pushed directly to the terminal for use.

So, how much does an Agent-native phone cost?

¥3,999.

A full-stack hardware and software package priced at ¥3,999 includes an Agent phone plus an annual Token Plan.

Yes, users who purchase the STEPX Neo pre‑release edition can enjoy a STEPX Token Plan with a monthly allocation of 10 billion tokens for 12 consecutive months.

At the same time, STEPX also launched a “Step Amoo Growth Plan,” which is quite fun.

The first 10,000 users who meet the task requirements will receive a “Starship Ticket,” allowing them to exchange any new STEPX device for free with a STEPX Neo within the next five years.

The base gets “secure boundaries”

However, after experiencing this far, an inevitable question arises—

With such high permissions, what if it goes out of control…

Could it secretly make purchases behind my back? Could it post my private photos and chat logs online?

Having a personal assistant is actually quite risky. The OpenClaw incident earlier this year was a disaster—so many examples exposing APIs and personal data running naked on the internet.

The key is that there are really a lot of “bad uncles” online! Various prompts are poisoned, the open‑source Skill community has also fallen, and it’s like playing Minesweeper—you never know which one you install might be a trojan.

How does STEPX Neo solve this problem?

The answer is—system‑level native security.

When you open STEPX Neo’s system settings, you’ll find a separate module called Agent Security.

On this page, you can directly manage permissions related to Agent A and view visualized Tool Call logs.

What can this feature do?

Specifically, the step terminal builds a set oftrustworthy, visible, controllable, reversible security foundations in Step AOS:

Trustworthy: All cloud data is anonymized; phone numbers, precise location, and sensitive multimodal images will not be indiscriminately used raw.

Visible: All tool invocations, permission requests, and execution traces are fully logged, making it clear which data A‑Zai has accessed, visible at a glance in the task panel.

Controllable: When encountering high‑risk actions such as deletion, payment, or cross‑app operations, the system never acts on its own; it must prompt a pop‑up for the user’s secondary confirmation, and authorization boundaries can be revoked with a single click at any time.

Reversible: The ultimate antidote for beginners—if the AI mistakenly deletes photos, files, notes, or contacts, the system supports step‑by‑step or full recovery.

The ecosystem is also natively secure.

To give you peace of mind when using community Skills and Agents, the official Step Terminal team steps in and sets the rules at the source:

All publishers must complete real‑name verification that matches their phone number; Skills and Agents are fully under a real‑name system;

In addition, as soon as the system detects that the package contains .env files, various key files, databases, logs, or files like USER.md that contain runtime privacy information, it will immediately block the upload.

This may also be why STEP​X Neo has been able to go so far in its ecosystem.

The deeper the security foundation, the wider the ecosystem can open its doors.

Because each call has clear permission isolation and audit boundaries, all parties in the ecosystem can confidently expose real service capabilities through H2A2A to Step Amoo; ordinary makers can also safely drop their hand‑crafted agents into phones to run daily tasks.

In the era of (Personal Agent), the focus of industry competition is shifting.

In the past, everyone fought over model parameters and leaderboard scores; but at the deployment stage, users’ willingness to trust is the biggest scaling bottleneck.

Without a secure foundation, even the smartest agent can only stay in a sandbox playing text games.

Whoever can establish security boundaries with a native architecture can claim to have secured a ticket to the personal agent era.

Time for hardware

In every wave of technological breakthroughs, cloud software, large models, and various agents are always at the forefront.

But to push the experience to the extreme, hardware‑software integration remains an unavoidable—and the most solid—path.

As computing pioneer Alan Kay famously said in 1982:

People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.
(真正认真对待软件的人，应该自己做硬件。)

This sentence later deeply inspired Steve Jobs.

Jobs once said directly:

Apple’s biggest secret is that we see ourselves as a software company.
The iPod is software—it’s software on a computer, software in the cloud, and even when placed in that beautiful box, it’s still software.

What is a Mac? A Mac is OS X. It lives in a beautiful box, but its essence is OS X.

In an era where cloud agents are everywhere, the Leap terminal chooses to create STEPX Neo and Step AOS, perhaps also embodying this product philosophy:

With the certainty of integrated hardware‑software modeling, we pack an intelligent entity full of limitless possibilities yet accompanied by uncertainty into a safe, controllable box.

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