HiSilicon Kirin 9010: Flagship SoC debuts with lower clocks and near-Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 performance

 Huawei has unveiled its newest mobile SoC, the Kirin 9010 (H/T @faridofanani96 on X), alongside its high-end Huawei Pura 70 (formerly known as Huawei P70) smartphones today. It powers the Pura 70 Pro, Pura 70 Pro+ and Pura 70 Ultra. Meanwhile, the vanilla Pura 70 has to make to with a Kirin 9000S1, an incrementally better version of the last-gen Kirin 9000s. Then again, the Kirin 9010 is no better off, as it is virtually indistinguishable from its predecessor.

Clocked at 2.30 GHz, the Kirin 9010's prime core is slower than that of the Kirin 9000s found on the P60 series, which operates at 2.26 GHz. On the other hand, the next cluster of three CPU cores gets a slight clock bump to 2.18 GHz (vs. 2.15 GHz). Lastly, its four efficiency cores also receive the same treatment (1.55 GHz on the Kirin 9010 vs. 1.54 GHz on the Kirin 9000s). The prime and middle cores support hyperthreading, and that's why they show up as a 12-core part on some apps.

For now, the Kirin 9010's CPU core architecture remains unknown. Given the rest of the layout, the prime and middle cores are next-gen counterparts of the Taishan V120 cores found on the Kirin 9000s. However, both SoCs, use Huawei's in-house Maleoon 910 GPU, although the newer version seems to be underclocked a little. More information about the chip is unlikely to surface soon (or officially), as the Kirin 9000s caused quite a stir due to its sanctions evading shenanigans.

Despite its nerfed clocks, the Kirin 9010 outperforms the Kirin 9000s in Geekbench. It scores 1,442 and 4,471 points in Geekbench 6.2's single and multi-core tests. The single-core performance is on par with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which is impressive given Huawei doesn't have access to cutting-edge nodes from TSMC. Unfortunately, its multi-core showing is less than stellar for a CPU that supports hyperthreading. While the Kirin 9010s won't break any benchmarking records, it should pack enough firepower to effectively govern a feature-packed phone like the Huawei Pura 70 Ultra