Leakster suggests Huawei P70 will feature new Kirin 9010 SoC

According to a Weibo leakster, Smart Pikachu, the Huawei P70 series will debut with a new chipset, the Kirin 9010. But this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about this chipset. Three years back, in April 2021, the company registered the trademark for the chipset.

However, due to the trade restrictions that were enforced by the US, the Kirin 9010 chipset didn’t get the chance to debut. Speaking of which, a leak about the chipset back in 2021 suggested that it would have been a 3 nm SoC. But, again, that’s unlikely to happen because of the US sanctions placed on the company. TSMC doesn’t take new orders from Huawei anymore, and SMIC doesn’t have such an advanced fabrication process yet.

Of course, Huawei did make it to the headlines recently for shipping new laptops with TSMC fabbed 5 nm Kirin 9006C SoC. But as the teardown from Tech Insights revealed, the 9006C chipset is from a very old stockpile.

Perhaps the Kirin 9010 chipset will just be another version of the 7 nm SMIC fabbed Kirin 9000S SoC, like what Huawei did with Kirin 9000SL for Nova 12 Ultra. If that’s the case, the upcoming Huawei P70 lineup won’t offer a performance upgrade over the predecessor. But if the company does come out with a 3 nm chipset, it may have found a way around the restrictions.

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