Rumor | Huawei Mate 40 Pro billed to debut with the 5nm Kirin 1000, not the Kirin 1020

The Huawei Mate 40 Pro is expected to be launched in September or thereabouts. Reports over the past few months have claimed the flagship will be powered by Huawei's next-gen premium SoC, the Kirin 1020, but that may not be the case.

According to well-known Huawei leakster @RODENT950, the Mate 40 Pro will feature the Kirin 1000, not the Kirin 1020. That...makes plenty of sense, seeing as Huawei's current flagship chipset is the Kirin 990. Jumping from the Kirin 990 to the Kirin 1020 would have been a rather left-field move.

The Kirin 1000 will be built on TSMC's 5nm node. This comes after reports that TSMC has now been barred from doing business with Huawei. Likely, orders for the Kirin 1000 were already made before that happened, though, so it'll be interesting to see how this pans out in the future. The Kirin 1000 has been rumored to feature Cortex-A78 cores, but how viable that is, remains to be seen.