Xiaomi might let you overclock your smartphone SoC with Android 16

While PCs and laptops offer users some freedom when it comes to fine-tuning their hardware, the process is a lot more cumbersome on smartphones. Xiaomi might change that with Android 16, if the newest data mine from Kacper Skrzypek makes it to the final release.

Xiaomi might give users the ability to overclock their CPU and GPU. By the looks of it, some of the parameters that can be adjusted include voltage and frequency. But you can't dial it up to your heart's content because there's an upper limit to that.Once the parameters are set, the device will reboot and check if the smartphone can actually sustain itself.

If not, the settings will revert to default. All of these settings might be found under a new "Chip performance dashboard". Until now, these features usually required a rooted phone, and it would be nice if that wouldn't be a requirement anymore.

Ideally, this should let enthusiasts fine-tune their smartphones further and extract more performance when needed. Conversely, underclocking the SoC to get more battery life will also be an option. But it's best if you leave this part of the phone alone if you're not familiar over/underclocking.

There's a good chance this could debut alongside Xiaomi's long-awaited in-house SoC because Qualcomm might not be too chuffed about letting end users play around with clocks and bricking their phones in the process.