Xiaomi has announced that they will be one of the first manufacturers to utilise Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 865. The new mobile chip will be powering Xiaomi’s upcoming Mi 10 flagship which is expected to launch in Q1 2020.
The Xiaomi Mi 10 will support 5G and this will be the successor to the current Mi 9 series. Looking at the past launches, the Mi 10 could be announced sometime in February in conjunction with Mobile World Congress 2020. Xiaomi has been using Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line chips on its flagship series since the very first Mi 1 in 2011.
At the moment, Qualcomm has not revealed the full details of its new Snapdragon 865 SoC. According to the Verge, it will not come with an integrated 5G modem. Instead, the Snapdragon 865 will require a separate Snapdragon X55 5G modem. They have also confirmed that Qualcomm will only offer the Snapdragon 865 as a combo with the X55 modem, so this new flagship SoC is exclusive only for 5G enabled handsets. The Snapdragon X55 modem can support dual-mode 5G and this means, it can be used for both SA and NSA networks.
In theory, having an integrated 5G solution is more efficient and both Huawei and MediaTek have already released their own flagship processors with integrated 5G. Interestingly, Qualcomm has also announced an integrated 5G SoC but it’s for their upper mid-range Snapdragon 765.
In the past year, Xiaomi has been rather quick in rolling out their latest smartphone models worldwide. Assuming the trend continues, the Xiaomi Mi 10 could be the first Snapdragon 865 powered smartphone that you can buy in Malaysia.
In case you missed it, Xiaomi is also announcing its Redmi K30 next week and this will be their first dual-mode 5G smartphone. The device is expected to be running on MediaTek’s new Dimensity 1000 chip.
