New leaks insist the Kirin 985 SoC exists after all, falls behind Dimensity 1000 in AI Benchmark

A wild Kirin 985 has appeared on AI Benchmark - only to be beaten immediately by the Dimensity 1000. This is the main message behind a new leak that does indeed purport to show the allegedly new Huawei SoC rise to the third spot in the test's rankings behind the new MediaTek 5G flagship processor.

The 985 had been touted as a fresh product of its OEM's HiSilicon division in the run-up to the launch of the V30, a phone from the same company's Honor brand. It is patently intended to fall between the older premium 980 chipset and the current 990 flagship silicon, something that seems to be borne out in its latest return to benchmarking.

This effort is now said to be due to its 4 Cortex A76 cores, 1 of which runs at a top speed of 2.58GHz, and the rest of which are 2.40GHz. They are joined by 4 addtional Cortex A55 cores clocked at 1.84GHz, as well as 2 of the Kirin 990 5G's Da Vinci NPU cores. If that sounds somewhat familiar, it is because this arrangement of ARM cores is also found in the new Kirin 820 processor, although the A76s are all slower in this lower-tier alternative.

The prominent leaker OnLeaks has also validated the Kirin 985's existence, claiming that it has re-emerged now for the purpose of supporting "the largest image sensor of the mobile industry". This, according to him, is a member of the heretofore-unreleased Sony IMX 7-series, and has a resolution of 50MP. The tipster now believes that both chips will feature in a variant of the Honor 30 series, currently thought to launch on April 15, 2020.