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Huawei’s new Mate 70 smartphone chip is ‘not a major redesign’, teardown report finds

The findings contradict enthusiasm on Chinese social media, where users claimed the new Kirin 9020 had a performance boost of 30 per cent

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People check out Huawei’s Mate 70 smartphones at a store in Beijing, November 26, 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE
Che Panin Beijing
Huawei Technologies’ new Mate 70 smartphones feature an in-house designed processor that does not show major improvements, indicating the Chinese tech champion’s ongoing struggles over US sanctions that restrict its access to advanced semiconductors, according to a new report.
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The Mate 70 Pro+, one of four models in the latest Mate 70 series released last month, features the Kirin 9020 system-on-chip, according to a report published on Wednesday by Canadian semiconductor research firm TechInsights, which did a teardown on the 5G smartphone.

“This chip is not a major redesign for the Kirin line,” TechInsights said.

The industry has closely monitored the Mate 70’s release for insights into Huawei’s progress in chip development. Last year, the US-blacklisted firm surprised analysts and US policymakers by incorporating a 7-nanometre chip from Chinese foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) in its Mate 60-series smartphones.

The latest findings contradict enthusiasm on Chinese social media platforms like Bilibili, where users celebrated the 9020 as a “fully home-grown chip” with a 30 per cent performance boost over the older 9000s and 9010 processors from the Mate 60 Pro, released in 2023.

People queue outside a Huawei store at the Wangfujing shopping area in Beijing on November 26, 2024. Photo: AFP
People queue outside a Huawei store at the Wangfujing shopping area in Beijing on November 26, 2024. Photo: AFP

The findings come a week after the US intensified its export controls on China’s semiconductor industry, adding 140 Chinese semiconductor firms to a trade blacklist and banning sales of high-bandwidth memory chips to China, in moves aimed at preventing US-core tech from being used to improve China’s military capabilities.

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