Huawei introduced its new in-house Kirin 9000s SoC with the Mate 60 last year. While the Pura 70 Ultra Kirin 9010 is technically a new chip, it only brings marginal improvements over its last generation counterpart. A new leak on Weibo (spotted by Huawei Central) indicates that the next generation of the Mate 70 series could bring more significant improvements with “two new features.”
The chip, whose name has not yet been revealed, is expected to score 1.1 million points in an anonymous benchmark test, which is most likely AnTuTu. According to AnTuTu’s database, this places it somewhere between the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, which is an impressive jump in performance. However, it’s best not to comment, as some users are often known to invent specs on the fly, as demonstrated by a previous Kirin 9010. Additionally, the Mate 70 series is not expected to be released until the month of October.
Weibo leaker Digital Chat Station also believes that the Mate 70 series will launch with a “new platform”, calling the Kirin 9010 a “half-generation update”. This could refer to the 5nm node of SMIC that is being talked about. How SMIC plans to break the 5nm barrier without access to ASML’s EUV machines remains a mystery. The Mate 70 series will not be the only one to benefit from the new SMIC node. Huawei is reportedly developing a laptop chip that would trade blows with Apple’s M3.
