Huawei’s re-entry into the smartphone market with its Kirin 9000S is regarded as a miracle in this industry, but that does not alter the fact that it is significantly slower than the competition. This is to be expected, as SMIC, Huawei’s foundry partner, is currently limited to mass producing 7nm wafers on older DUV equipment, meaning that technologically, it is inferior to Samsung and TSMC and will likely trail behind them in the long run.
However, these limitations do not mean that future Kirin SoCs have to continue being slower, with the latest rumor claiming that the Mate 70 lineup will have a silicon that is faster than the Kirin 9000S fueling the Mate 60 series, but it will still be two generations behind the competition in terms of raw performance.
New Kirin chipset for the Mate 70 models is still an improvement, as Kirin 9000S had performance equivalent to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888
Unfortunately, as the rumor goes, the new Kirin may not be found in Huawei’s upcoming P70 range, which will directly succeed the P60 from last year. Instead, it is said that the former Chinese giant will equip the P70, P70 Pro, and the P70 Art with the Kirin 9010, which, as the chipset model name goes, could be a slightly changed-up version of the Kirin 9000S. It is not like Huawei has any choice in the matter because, according to manufacturing timelines, SMIC is still limited to 7nm technology, but the latter has been reported to set up 5nm production lines for its client, likely catering to the Mate 70 family later in the year.
However, as mentioned above, despite the jump from 7nm to 5nm, the performance of this unnamed Kirin silicon may not be faster than the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, which is two generations old at this stage. Fortunately, if we compare the Kirin 9000S, Mochamad Farido Fanani states that its performance is equal to a Snapdragon 888, so that is still an improvement, even if the new Kirin will still be sluggish when compared with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and the Dimensity 9300.
Rumor: The new Kirin in the Huawei Mate 70 series is equivalent to Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. A little information, Kirin 9000s is equivalent to Snapdragon 888. A little late. pic.twitter.com/v3lZuHoCVy
— Mochamad Farido Fanani (@faridofanani96) February 19, 2024
It might take years for Huawei’s chip arm to match Qualcomm, MediaTek, Apple, and Samsung in a pure performance comparison, but the fact that it was able to rid itself of foreign companies and rely on its own production resources says a lot about a company that was once estimated to dethrone Samsung and become the largest smartphone brand in the world. Still, we would love to see some fight from the Mate 70 line when it launches in China.
