Expectations for the Kirin 670 was started long back in last year but, what we got was the Kirin 659. The 659 wasn’t a bad SOC by any means & it was enough to compete with something like the Snapdragon 625 but, it wasn’t enough to compete the 630 & with the rise of the even more powerful Snapdragon 636, Huawei definitely needs an upgrade to compete Qualcomm in the budget segment. Hence, it looks like the Kirin 670 will finally arrive this year & it is expected to compete the Snapdragon 636 in budget & mid range segments. The 12nm Kirin 670 Will Likely Power The Honor 8X.
The Kirin 670 is expected to be build upon the 12nm Process Technology & it’ll likely be manufactured by TSMC. The 670 will hopefully cure the biggest disadvantages of the 659 by finally introducing support for 4K Video Recording & Bluetooth 5.0 to the budget & mid range segment that Qualcomm is already providing since 2017. However, the 12nm Process Technology will likely outperform Qualcomm’s 14nm SOCs in terms of power efficiency.
The list of devices to come out with the Kirin 670 in the first batch do include the Honor 8X. Also, the Honor 10i & 10 Lite (names & branding may vary by country) will likely also be powered by the same SOC. The graphical power for the Kirin 670 shall be delivered by the Mali-G72 but, in this case it’s probably not the Flagship MP12 variant. The SOC is also expected to have some AI capabilities.
Kirin 670 powered devices are expected to be announced in the second half of 2018. So, we hope Huawei comes with less disappointments this year.
