Xiaomi showed off the Surge S1, a mobile processor that it developed in-house. Only a handful of companies make their own processors, including Apple, Huawei, and Samsung.
Doing so allows for a higher level of integration when compared to using a chip designed by Qualcomm or MediaTek. The Surge S1 is an octa-core SoC with four ARM Cortex A53 cores at 2.2 GHz and four A53 cores at 1.4 GHz. It is paired with the Mali T-860 MP4 GPU for 4K video, and a 32-bit DSP with 16kHz sampling for high-quality VoLTE voice calls.
The chip is already in production and, in fact, Xiaomi said it forms the engine in its new Mi 5c smartphone. The 5c is a minor update to last year’s Mi 5. It is a China-only Android device with a 5.15-inch full HD screen, 12-megapixel main camera, 8-megapixel selfie camera, 3 GB of RAM, 64 GB of storage, and 2,860mAh battery.
It reaches China March 3 for about $220.
