Huawei names Kirin 9020 in Pura 80, ending years of silence on flagship chips

Huawei has publicly identified the Kirin 9020 as the system-on-a-chip inside its new Pura 80 smartphones, ending years of silence about the silicon powering its flagship devices. The name surfaced in user screenshots after a system update, marking the first official confirmation of a high-end Kirin processor in roughly five years. Huawei declined to comment.

Until now, details on chips inside recent 5G models, such as the Mate 60 Pro and Mate 70, came largely from teardown work. TechInsights previously assessed that SMIC builds the Kirin 9020 on a 7-nanometer-class process and called it an incremental step over the Kirin 9010.

The disclosure underlines Huawei's broader recovery in mobile after U.S. sanctions derailed its supply chain. A 2023 teardown tied SMIC to the Kirin inside the Mate 60 Pro. Before that comeback, the Mate 40 series in October 2020 had been the company's last 5G line following its addition to the U.S. blacklist.

Consumer chief Richard Yu has described the fallout as severe, saying global availability collapsed and shipments plunged. At the same time, the company pushed ahead with its in-house HarmonyOS to reduce reliance on foreign platforms. Huawei says more than ten million devices now run HarmonyOS 5 after heavy multi-year investment and thousands of engineers assigned annually.

That momentum has translated into market share: Huawei led China's smartphone market in the June quarter with an estimated 18.1 percent of shipments, its first time back on top in four years, according to IDC.