Huawei To Launch the Mate 20 with Kirin 980 on October 16th

Just a small note to detail one of Huawei’s announcements today: alongside the Kirin 980 announcement, Richard Yu, Huawei’s CEO, stated that their next generation flagship device, the Mate 20, will be launched on October 16^th. At the heart of the new device will be that Kirin 980, which Huawei boasts as having several world firsts.

As with previous years, Huawei has announced a new flagship SoC one month and followed it 6-8 weeks later with a device announcement. It has happened the last two years, and this is no different: the Kirin 970 from last year is in at least 7 devices from Honor and Huawei now, so we expect the new Kirin 980 to be just as prolific.

For full details of the chip, head on over to Andrei’s analysis, but the specification is as follows;

HiSilicon High-End Kirin SoC Lineup
SoC	Kirin 980	Kirin 970	Kirin 960
CPU	2x A76 @ 2.60 GHz 2x A76 @ 1.92 GHz @ 512KB L2's 4x A55 @ 1.80 GHz @ 128KB L2's 4MB DSU L3	4x A73 @ 2.36 GHz 4x A53 @ 1.84 GHz 2MB L2	4x A73 @ 2.36GHz 4x A53 @ 1.84GHz 2MB L2
GPU	ARM Mali-G76MP10 @ 720 MHz	ARM Mali-G72MP12 @ 746 MHz	ARM Mali-G71MP8 @ 1037MHz
LPDDR4 Memory	4x 16-bit CH LPDDR4X @ 2133MHz 34.1GB/s	4x 16-bit CH LPDDR4X @ 1833 MHz 29.9GB/s	4x 16-bit CH LPDDR4 @ 1866MHz 29.9GB/s
Storage I/F	UFS 2.1	UFS 2.1	UFS 2.1
ISP/Camera	New Dual ISP +46% speed	Dual 14-bit ISP	Dual 14-bit ISP (Improved)
Encode/Decode	2160p60 Decode 2160p?? Encode	2160p60 Decode 2160p30 Encode	1080p H.264 Decode & Encode 2160p30 HEVC Decode
Integrated Modem	Kirin 980 Integrated LTE (Category 21/18) DL = 1400 Mbps 4x4 MIMO 3x20MHz CA, 256-QAM (5CA no MIMO) UL = 200 Mbps 2x2 MIMO 1x20MHz CA, 256-QAM	Kirin 970 Integrated LTE (Category 18/13) DL = 1200 Mbps 5x20MHz CA, 256-QAM UL = 150 Mbps 2x20MHz CA, 64-QAM	Kirin 960 Integrated LTE (Category 12/13) DL = 600Mbps 4x20MHz CA, 64-QAM UL = 150Mbps 2x20MHz CA, 64-QAM
Sensor Hub	i8	i7	i6
NPU	Dual @ >2x perf	Yes	No
Mfc. Process	TSMC 7nm	TSMC 10nm	TSMC 16nm FFC

We will be there at the launch, and if the phone matches the impressive specifications of the chip, we will be in for an interesting story.