Huawei’s new Mate 70 smartphone chip is ‘not a major redesign’, report finds

The Mate 70 Pro+, one of four models in the latest Mate 70 series released last month, features the Kirin 9020 system-on-chip, according to a report published on Wednesday by Canadian semiconductor research firm TechInsights, which did a teardown on the 5G smartphone.

“This chip is not a major redesign for the Kirin line,” TechInsights said.

The latest findings contradict enthusiasm on Chinese social media platforms like Bilibili, where users celebrated the 9020 as a “fully home-grown chip” with a 30 per cent performance boost over the older 9000s and 9010 processors from the Mate 60 Pro, released in 2023.

The findings come a week after the US intensified its export controls on China’s semiconductor industry, adding 140 Chinese semiconductor firms to a trade blacklist and banning sales of high-bandwidth memory chips to China, in moves aimed at preventing US-core tech from being used to improve China’s military capabilities.