News & Reviews:   chipset

At the beginning of the year, we saw the news that OPPO will be manufacturing chipsets to be used on their own devices. The process of making a chipset takes a long time and great effort, so it might have to be a while before OPPO's chipset gets to meet the world. However, it is said that the company is now speeding up the process because of the US sanctions that happened between the US and Huawei.

Most devices these days use chipsets featuring CPU and GPU cores from ARM, with new hardware announced once a year. Well, that time of the year has come and the company has now announced the Cortex-A78 and Cortex-X1 CPU cores, as well as Mali-G78 GPU that will greatly boost the performance of future smartphones.

Earlier, we have heard the news that HONOR might turn to MediaTek for the supply of chipsets as the aftermath of the US sanctions. As the parent brand, Huawei is also in a hardship that the tech giant has been cut from most of its chipset suppliers. Huawei has been using MediaTek's chipsets on some of its smartphones, and the order made to the Taiwanese chip manufacturer has even increased to 300 percent this year. However, it is said that MediaTek might not able to continue to supply chipsets to Huawei for some reason.

The US sanctions on Huawei has been happening for quite a while and the situation is definitely not getting better anytime soon. Earlier, we have also seen the news that the President of United States Donald Trump has extended the ban until May 2021. Not only the company has lost access to Google services, there are also some other problems surfacing as well such as chip supply. It is said that HONOR (sub-brand from Huawei) is planning to turn to MediaTek for the supply of 5G SoCs in the future.

Not only the competition between smartphones is intense nowadays, the manufacturers that provide chipsets for the devices are also required to keep up with the needs of the market. Today, MediaTek has launched an upgraded version of the Dimensity 1000 chipset and it's called Dimensity 1000 Plus (just like Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 and 855 Plus), and there are a lot of improvements making it strong enough to compete with the others.

There were reports spotted on mydrivers.com, stating that Qualcomm might be thinking of putting a limit on how cheap a smartphone equipped with the Snapdragon 865 with 5G can be priced at. While not much has been confirmed, it seems that the lowest a smartphone with the chipset can be priced at is around USD430(~RM1788).

Huawei recently announced that they might be introducing a new Kirin 820 5G chipset, which will be unveiled during the online conference that’s happening at 9PM on 24 February 2020. Based on a statement by gizchina.com, it seems that the new chipset comes with 5G support and it is manufactured using TSMN’s 6nm process.

Many of you must have heard the news Apple is planning to make its own 5G modems in the future. With that being said, the company might not be relying on Qualcomm anymore to support their 5G devices after the contract ends. Now, a similar case is happening to OPPO too. Instead of a 5G modem, the smartphone manufacturer is heading to something big, which is to develop its own smartphone chipset.

Based on a statement by eetimes.com, HiSilicon might be keen on supplying chipsets to manufacturers other than Huawei. It seems that the Shenzhen HiSilicon branch will be responsible for supplying chips to Huawei, while the Shanghai HiSilicon branch will focus solely on the open market.

Based on a statement by MediaTek CEO Cai Lixiang, the MediaTek’s 5G chipset will most likely be launched in Q1 2020 and we can expect smartphones released around January and March 2020 to come equipped with it. But that’s not all, MediaTek has also announced that MediaTek will be launching a 5G-capable chipset for mid-range and low-end smartphones as well.