Speed, glorious speed: All upcoming Huawei and Honor flagships will be 5G capable

Just over a month ago we reported about the Mate 30 being tipped to become the first smartphone to feature the Kirin 985 SoC. Now, a new report from Taiwan has emerged, which seemingly confirms that the upcoming chipset will feature a 5G modem. Moreover, Huawei owned HiSilicon will include 5G modems with all Kirin 985 chips, so it follows that all devices equipped with the SoC will be at least 5G capable.

Manufacturing will begin in Q3, which aligns with Huawei including the chip in its Mate 30 series ready for its expected unveiling in October. Huawei equipped its Honor and own-brand flagships with the Kirin 980, so presumably, it will do the same with its next iterations too. Hence, we expect to see the successors to the Honor Magic 2, View 20, Mate 20, Mate 20 Pro, Mate 20 X, P30 and P30 Pro all powered by the Kirin 985. The successor to the Mate X may be the exception here, as the device may not be on the same update cycle as its Huawei and Honor siblings considering that is so cutting-edge.

The Taiwanese report also confirms that the Kirin 985 will be based on the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV) process, which we previously expected. TSMC's EUV process should allow HiSilicon to include 20% more transistors on the same die and deliver a chip with better performance along with lower power consumption. The improvements will also be achieved with the help of FlipChip Package-on-Package (FC-Pop), which allows HiSilicon to vertically stack transistors. The Kirin 985 will be manufacturered on the 7 nm+ FinFET process too.