Huawei announced the Kirin 980 chipset during the IFA 2018 event in Berlin which was first integrated into the Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro smartphones. While we expected the Kirin 980 to power the next line of flagship Huawei phones, it’s come to our attention that Huawei is already planning to unveil the successor to the chipset.
The news comes in the form of a tweet from XDA Developers Editor, Mishal Rahman who revealed in a tweet that a new HiSilicon Kirin 985 Processor is on the cards from Huawei. Judging by the model number of the processor and Huawei’s past attempts with SoCs ending with “5”, it looks as if the upcoming Kirin 985 will be a slighter upgrade over the Kirin 980 Mobile Platform.
The HiSilicon Kirin 985 is likely Huawei’s next flagship mobile platform.
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) December 21, 2018
This will be the first time in two years since Huawei will be releasing an upgraded version of a flagship chipset. The last time the Chinese company did so was when it launched the Kirin 955 chip as a tiny upgrade over the Kirin 950 SoC which initially powered the Mate 8 smartphone. At the time, the Kirin 955 and Kirin 950 only had a basic difference of clock speeds between each other with every other element being the same.
This means, the Kirin 985 chipset will only be a small upgrade over the Kiri 980 and there’s a possibility that Huawei will keep selling the Kirin 980 even after the launch of the next high-end mobile platform. We can expect the Kirin 985 to power the Huawei P30 smartphones which could be unveiled sometime during the first quarter of 2019.