Reported by NUPIAO
June 11 – According to reports, Lin Xi, the hardware product lead for ByteDance’s AI-powered “Doubao” phone under its Ocean team, has recently resigned. This marks the first major departure of a core hardware manager since ByteDance launched its AI smartphone project in 2024.
NUPIAO reached out to ByteDance for comment but has not received a response as of press time.
Public records show that before joining ByteDance, Lin Xi spent a long tenure at Huawei’s terminal division, where he served as the hardware product lead for the Pura X foldable phone. The Pura X is Huawei’s first “wide-fold” flagship phone and the world’s first mass-produced 16:10 aspect ratio foldable with an inner display. Launched in March last year at a starting price of 7,499 yuan, it racked up 1.2 million pre-orders within 48 hours and nearly 100,000 activations in its first week.
In 2026, as ByteDance accelerated its AI phone project, the company recruited Lin Xi. After joining, he became a key member of the Ocean team, overseeing the planning, development, and launch of Doubao phone hardware. He reported directly to Kayden (Liu Chengcheng), the head of Ocean. Kayden, a former founder of 36Kr, joined ByteDance in 2022 after his company Jingling Technology was acquired. He now reports to Zhu Jun, head of ByteDance’s Flow team.
Within ByteDance’s structure, the Flow team is on par with Douyin, and Ocean serves as Flow’s core hardware unit. It’s the main vehicle for ByteDance’s “AI + Hardware” strategy, tasked with extending the capabilities of its Doubao large model from software to hardware devices. The team has integrated hardware resources from years of acquisitions, including former members from Smartisan, VR headset maker PICO, and smart earphone brand Oladance. In 2025, it also brought in several seasoned smartphone industry veterans who left Honor.
Ocean’s key goal is to build an AI hardware ecosystem centered around the Doubao large model, covering categories like phones, earphones, glasses, and learning machines. Launched products include the Ola Friend smart earphones, but the Doubao phone is its strategic focus, described by ByteDance as the core of a “trinity” strategy—merging large model capabilities, a super app ecosystem, and hardware terminal experience.
The Doubao phone is manufactured by ZTE as an ODM, with early models appearing as Nubia M153 engineering units. It features a system-level Doubao phone assistant, offering cross-app operations, screen perception, and global memory as core AI functions. The goal is to rethink smartphone interaction logic through on-device large models. In December 2025, ByteDance and ZTE jointly released a technical preview of the engineering prototype, with a small batch available for sale.
However, the Doubao phone’s debut sparked industry-wide discussions about data security. Some users expressed concerns that cross-app auto-operations could leak personal privacy, especially regarding payment data safety.
In response, the Doubao phone assistant team clarified: all sensitive operations require a “manual confirmation” step, and payment actions must be user-initiated to avoid errors. Users can also set permissions to limit the AI assistant’s access to private data like contacts and albums, with all operations logged for real-time viewing and deletion. Technically, ByteDance uses on-device encryption storage, processing user data locally rather than in the cloud, to protect data security at the base level.
Currently, the Doubao phone is still in R&D and testing, with no official mass production or launch yet. ByteDance has previously stated that the Doubao phone is a product that needs to be developed in partnership with phone manufacturers. The company is in talks with several phone makers about assistant collaboration and has no plans to build its own phone.
In April this year, market rumors suggested Honor was in talks with ByteDance about collaborating on the Doubao phone. Honor later denied this, saying the rumors were untrue after an internal check. “Honor remains committed to delivering quality products through tech innovation. If there’s any strategic partnership, we’ll announce it via official channels first,” a Honor spokesperson said.
With Lin Xi’s departure, it’s unclear whether the Doubao phone’s development timeline, hardware adjustments, or supply chain partnerships will be affected.
Analysts suggest that for the Doubao phone to break through as ByteDance’s flagship AI hardware, it needs not just tech innovation but also a stable core team, mature hardware management experience, and strong supply chain integration capabilities—areas ByteDance’s hardware business still needs to strengthen.
In addition to Lin Xi, earlier this year, Li Haoqian, founder of Oladance under the Ocean team, was also rumored to be leaving. According to reports, Li’s internal role adjustment at ByteDance remains uncertain, with possibilities including a transfer. Li, a former senior executive at Bose China, joined ByteDance in April 2024 and led hardware projects like the Ola Friend smart earphones, making him a key figure in ByteDance’s hardware division. ByteDance has not publicly commented on this either.
