We’d already heard that Huawei had been tapped by Google to produce the next Nexus smartphone, but it now seems the Chinese firm will also provide the processor.
While Qualcomm’s Snapdragon series chips have powered the lion’s share of previous Nexus handsets, it seems Huawei will eschew the trend.
Instead, a new report out of the Chinese media (via GizmoChina) suggests the next Nexus smartphone will carry a Kirin 930 chip.
That’s Huawei’s own custom-built mobile processor, which we’ve already seen in action on the Huawei Mediapad X2 smartphone.
Don’t let the chip’s relative obscurity fool you either; it’s actually a pretty powerful chip.
The Kirin 930 is built using a 16nm manufacturing process, which is more efficient than Qualcomm’s current flagship Snapdragon 810 chip – that’s based on a 20nm process.
It’s also got 64-bit architecture, eight processor cores, ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture, and a clock-rate of 2.0GHz.
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That puts it firmly in flagship territory, which means the new Nexus smartphone could be a formidable offering to the smartphone space.
It’s also worth mentioning that there’s a current trend in the industry of manufacturers weaning themselves off Qualcomm chips, with both LG and Samsung seemingly looking to shun the Snapdragon series.
Whatever the case, both Huawei and Google will have to work hard to repair the damage the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 did to the respectability of the Nexus line-up.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
