Huawei’s biggest announcement at the IFA tech trade show in Berlin wasn’t a product but a next-generation processor – the Kirin 980 – that will power its products well into the future.
This first will be the upcoming Mate 20 flagship smartphone which will be launched in London in October.
It will be the first Huawei device with the Kirin 980 SoC (system on a chip) onboard to enable an all-new level of mobile AI.
With the Kirin 980, which will be even more powerful than the popular Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, it will be able to recognise 4,600 images per minute – a 120 per cent improvement over the Kirin 970.
The Kirin 980 is the world’s first commercial SoC manufactured with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturer Company’s 7nm process which means the chip can pack 6.9 billion transistors within a 1cm space – 1.6 times more than density than the previous generation.
So what does this mean for the user?
The processor has the power to handle intensive workloads and provide significant power efficiency.
This means faster app launch times, better battery life, better multitasking and smoother performance.
The Kirin 980, which integrates the Mali-G76 GPU, will also deliver an amazing speed and graphics performance for mobile games.
It will offer 46 per cent greater graphics processing power and 178 per cent improved power efficiency.
The Kirin 980 will also faster data throughput on wi-fi and also provide stronger support for multi-camera configurations as well as HDR colour reproduction that can manipulate contrast on different parts of the image.
The technology will also provide better motion tracking with the ability to track a subject with 97.4 per cent accuracy.
Kirin 980 will also provide a pipeline dedicated to processing video so the camera can shoot the video with a 33 per cent shorter delay.
On the GPS side, the chip will also increase GPS accuracy by up to 10 times.
The processor will also integrate the world’s first modem supporting LTE Cat21 with a peak download speak of 1.4Gbps.
Kirin 980 will also support carrier aggregation across frequency bands so users will have the same connectivity experience across operators and different areas.
It will also be 5G ready to allow Huawei flagships device to be ready when the 5G networks are rolled around the world.
Huawei also unveiled the AI Cube – a smart speaker with a built-in 4G router and Alexa compatibility but this won’t be released in Australia.
The company also introduced new colours for its popular P20 Pro smartphone including white and new brown and black leather finishes, but again, it won’t be coming to Australia.
*Stephen Fenech travelled to Berlin with assistance from Samsung and Huawei
