46 ANDROID ADVISOR • ISSUE 46
PREVIEW
Huawei leaked the Kirin 970 at IFA 2017 ahead
of CEO Richard Yu’s keynote speech where he
announced the chip will be inside the Mate 10. That
phone will be announced on 16 October.
We’re assuming that the P11 will get it, too. The
Kirin 970 is an octa-core chip (4x 2.4GHz Cortex-A73
and 4x 1.8GHz Cortex-A53 cores) with a 12-core GPU
all built on a 10nm process like the Snapdragon 835
co-made with Samsung.
It’s Huawei’s first mobile AI computing platform
featuring a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU)
and will be open to developers. The firm says it will
bring ‘AI experiences to life and changing the way
we interact with our devices’.LG G7
Samsung held all the strings last year when LG was
forced to make the tough decision of launching its
new flagship with an older processor or waiting a few
months until after the Snapdragon 835-toting Galaxy
S8 arrived. It chose the former option, which has
almost certainly harmed its sales against the faster S8.
So it’s no surprise to learn that LG is in a rush
to update its flagship, and that it may unveil the
successor even earlier than usual – potentially
in January 2018. Business Korea suggests the
smartphone will be unveiled at CES 2018.
With rumours of a Snapdragon 845 on board,
Samsung is then the one forced to update its
flagship quickly or risk lost sales in the meantime. Of
course, that’s if rumours that Samsung once again
holds exclusive rights on the first batch of chips are