A new leak provides evidence that Huawei will not be limiting itself to the Kirin 9000S and intends to bring new chipsets to the more affordable options as it attempts to regain control of a market it was dominating before trade sanctions took their hold in 2019. The former Chinese giant is said to be working on the Kirin 8000, with the silicon expected to debut in a non-flagship model.
Kirin 8000 to reportedly debut in a mid-ranger named Huawei Nova 12 Pro, but CPU cluster yet to be shared
Previously, we reported that a tipster mentioned that a Novea 12 Ultra would feature a new Huawei chipset named ‘Kirin K9,’ but at the time, it was unconfirmed if ‘K9’ was short for Kirin 9000S or if Huawei was working on a completely new silicon. It turns out that it was the latter because, according to an image shared by @faridofanani96 on X, the Nova 12 Pro’s specifications page shows the Kirin 8000 and other details.
Unfortunately, the exact CPU cluster cannot be seen anywhere in the image below, but given Huawei’s chipset development history, the ‘8000’ series are typically found in non-flagship handsets, so the Kirin 8000 may be slightly slower than the Kirin 9000S. Even though we have little information about the SoC’s manufacturing process, our initial thoughts are that just like the Kirin 9000S, the Kirin 8000 has been fabricated on SMIC’s 7nm process.
Huawei Nova 12 Pro is actually Kirin 8000, which is very interesting. pic.twitter.com/ofSUUpVyuT
— Mochamad Farido Fanani (@faridofanani96) December 25, 2023
As for the specifications, the Nova 12 Pro sports a crisp 2776 x 1224 display, so the Kirin 8000 must be somewhat capable of driving all those pixels. Additionally, the Nova 12 Pro features 12GB of LPDDR4 RAM, cementing our belief that this model is a mid-ranger. What is impressive about this leak is that Huawei is slowly expanding its smartphone chipset portfolio despite the active U.S. sanctions.
Even though the Kirin 8000 will likely be slower than the competition, Huawei’s primary objective was to reduce dependency on foreign companies rather than push itself to mass produce a cutting-edge silicon. In an earlier report, it was stated that Huawei has the potential to disrupt the competitive dynamic between competitors by introducing the Kirin 9000S to non-flagship smartphones, though in this case, Huawei is said to launch a completely different silicon. The Nova 12 Pro could be unveiled before the new year starts, so we will have all the details for you in the near future.
News Source: @faridofanani96
