Huawei has confirmed its Mate 20 flagship will be powered by a Kirin 980 processor, which is pitched as the “world’s first commercially available 7nm chipset”. In a press release sent to South African media, seen by GearBurn, Huawei has revealed that its Kirin 980 chipset will power the Mate 20 series. Huawei says a Kirin 980 chip will launch, alongside the Mate 20 series in October.
“Rumors say that the Kirin 980 will feature an octa-core CPU comprising four A76 cores and four A55 cores, with the larger cores running as fast as at 2.8GHz,” reads an excerpt from the release.
The mobile processor will be based on TSMC’s 7nm manufacturing process. Evidently, Apple’s next-generation A12 chipset will also be based on TSMC’s 7nm manufacturing process. In its press release, Huawei also says that the next-generation Kirin processor will have an improved AI performance.
“As to the NPU, murmurs in the market indicate that the Kirin 980 will also feature a new iteration of the AI processor that feature improved AI performance,” according to GearBurn.
Huawei’s Mate series has tradtionally offered high-end internals, and the Mate 20 lineup will be no different. This year’s Mate 20 series will replace the existing Mate 10 lineup, first launched in October last year. The Mate 20 Pro and Mate 20 will be powered by a Kirin 980 processor, the Mate 20 Lite is expected to come with a Kirin 710 chipset. Out of the three, Mate 20 Pro will be a top-tier smartphone that will likely to rival the likes of iPhone X 2 and Galaxy Note 9. The handset is expected to come with a 6.3-inch notched screen, 6GB RAM, in-display fingerprint scanner, Android 9 Pie, and a 4,200mAh battery. On the back, it will have a triple-camera setup, similar to the P20 Pro.
Huawei has recently surpassed Apple to become the world’s second largest smartphone maker in the second quarter of 2018. The Chinese company aims to ship 200 million smartphones this year.