HiSilicon Kirin 985 SoC to Debut with Huawei Mate 30 Smartphones

Back in August 2018, Huawei announced its latest flagship mobile chipset called HiSilicon Kirin 980. It is the first chipset to be fabricated on TSMC’s 7nm FinFET process technology. The company introduced the Kirin 980 SoC for the very first time with their Mate 20 smartphones. Later this year, Huawei will launch the Mate 30 lineup as the successor to Mate 20. Instead of launching a completely new chipset, Huawei will reportedly introduce the Kirin 985 SoC to power the Mate 30 series. It will be an upgrade to the Kirin 980 SoC. The official announcement about this new chipset will be coming in Q3 2019.

While it is said to be built on new 7nm FinFET node, no specific details are mentioned. However, the earlier leaks mentioned the Kirin 985 to be built using the EUV-based (Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography) 7nm process which will help in designing the chipsets even more precisely. Even the upcoming Apple A13 chip will be built using the same new technology. While the Kirin 985 will be built on TSMC’s 7nm N7 process, it will use an enhanced N7 Pro process for the Apple A13 chip. Compared to the Kirin 980, the upcoming Kirin 985 is expected to offer 10% to 20% better performance.

The Kirin 980 is the world’s first chipset to come with Cortex-A76 cores and the Mali G76 GPU.  It came with 2x Cortex-A76 cores clocked at 2.60 GHz, 2x Cortex-A76 cores clocked at 1.92 GHz, and 4x Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 1.80 GHz. The Kirin 980 also featured Dual NPU to offer a better AI experience like faster image recognition capability. It even included Dual ISP to provide support for latest features like multi-camera configurations, new HDR color reproduction technology, and more. With the Mate 30 series, the company will also offer 5G variant alongside the standard options.

In the next couple of months, the company will be launching the Mate X and Mate 20 X 5G smartphones with Balong 5000 5G multi-mode chipset. While the Mate X is the first ever foldable 5G smartphone, the Mate 20 X 5G is an upgrade to last year’s Mate 20 X. Stay tuned on Phone Radar for more details!

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