Kirin 9100 Rumored To Power Huawei’s Mate 70 Series, Early Performance Figure Reveals SoC Obtains 1.1 Million In AnTuTu, Matching Snapdragon 8 Gen 1

Qualcomm is expected to switch to its custom Oryon cores when it officially announces the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. A company executive claimed that the flagship SoC would be unveiled in October, making it the first silicon from the San Diego firm to transition to in-house CPU designs completely. However, this shift could cost Qualcomm’s partners a hefty sum, as one tipster claims that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will be expensive, and phone makers will have to evaluate the overall configuration of their devices to sell them at competitive prices.

The Kirin 9000S enabled Huawei to regain its lost market in China, staging a comeback that is making rivals like Apple nervous and probably frustrating the Biden administration as their continued efforts to stifle the competition overseas have been fruitless. However, as Huawei shifts towards mass production of advanced chipsets for smartphones and PCs, it will have to take away production resources from all Kirin 9000 variants, as mentioned by one tipster.

China’s largest semiconductor manufacturing firm, SMIC, has reportedly achieved a new milestone and too, without the use of advanced EUV machinery that gives companies like Samsung and TSMC an edge in the cutting-edge chipmaking space. The latest information claims that using DUV equipment, the 5nm process has been completed, and SMIC is ready to mass produce the first batch of wafers. Huawei was previously said to be working closely with its local foundry partner to introduce a new Kirin SoC that will be found in the upcoming Mate 70 series for October later this year.

The latest 11-inch and 13-inch M4 iPad Pro models are equipped with Tandem OLED technology, making them the first consumer products to be equipped with such panels. The obvious benefits include higher brightness and richer colors, and perhaps the biggest perk of using an OLED apart from the battery life improvements is the longer lifespan of the displays. However, users may not appreciate that the addition of Tandem OLED actually results in worse battery life compared to the M1 version with mini-LED, at least according to the latest tests.

Google is expected to unveil the Tensor G4 later this year for the Pixel 9 lineup, and just like its previous releases, the company is likely sticking with Samsung as its foundry partner. However, next year, the advertising giant is said to take a different direction, with its Pixel 10 range apparently featuring a 3nm SoC from TSMC. To help with the transition, Google is rumored to have expanded its Taiwanese R&D center, where it is expected to collaborate closely with the semiconductor giant to produce its best silicon to date.

The Galaxy S24 family shipped with Samsung’s ‘Galaxy AI,’ which is the company’s first AI-powered feature set that elevates the smartphone experience. So far, this addition has proven to be successful, as Samsung recently regained the top spot by beating Apple and becoming the largest smartphone vendor in Q1 2024. We expect to see more of these features added to the Galaxy S25 range next year, but ‘Battery AI’ is something that the company is rumored to introduce before it officially announces its 2025 flagship family.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is expected to be announced in October this year, but with a few modifications, as an earlier rumor claimed that Qualcomm will adjust its frequency to reach 4.26GHz, possibly to obtain an advantage against Apple and its upcoming A18 chipsets. However, based on a recent discussion, it appears that these changes are only being done so Qualcomm can have an edge against its rival in Geekbench, with potentially little to no benefit in real-world applications.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 design was previously said to be finalized in April this year, with a target frequency of 4.00GHz and above. However, looking at Apple’s M4 and its high clock speeds that help the chipset attain a record-breaking single-core score, Qualcomm is rumored to introduce a chipset redesign with a new target frequency of 4.26GHz. This change is said to be made to take on Apple’s upcoming A18 and A18 Pro, which may also operate at higher frequencies to gain an edge against the competition.

The ‘less than stellar’ demand for the Apple Vision Pro has caused shipment estimates to drop to 400,000 to 450,000 units for 2024, a massive drop compared to the previous 800,000 estimates. Consumers are discouraged from making the AR headset their daily driver thanks to its ludicrous starting price of $3,499, and even though Apple intends to launch the device overseas, its ‘expensive’ problem is yet to be addressed. Fortunately, the company might overcome this hurdle with the Apple Vision Pro 2, with a rumor claiming that the successor will have a starting price of $1,500 and will add two new suppliers, Samsung and SeeYa, to the list.

A few rumors have clamored that Samsung intends to keep several areas of the Galaxy S25 Ultra unaltered compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, but the specifications bit might be another story. One tipster mentions that the Korean giant will finally introduce a RAM upgrade to its top-end flagship in 2025, but the internal storage might not change.

The M4 announcement during Apple’s ‘Let Loose’ event painted a rosy picture for potential buyers, and they would have likely believed that the latest iPad Pro models would have access to four performance and six efficiency cores. Unfortunately, that is not the case here because Apple cleverly hid the finer details from its audience, and to actually get the chipset with the 10-core CPU, you have to avoid the 256GB or 512GB models altogether. Hearing this is disappointing because the base model does not come cheap and is currently listed for pre-order at $999.

The M4 is expected to be announced later today during Apple’s ‘Let Loose’ event, and with the company already employing the use of TSMC’s 3nm technology before, we immediately assumed that the new silicon would be fabricated on this lithography. However, one report states that unlike the M3 powering various Macs and mass produced on the ‘N3B’ architecture, Apple’s M4 will switch to the updated ‘N3E’ process, resulting in various improvements. The report also mentions that the upcoming SoC will arrive in three variants, which is nothing unusual regarding Apple Silicon releases.