Hardwired
In Hardwired, AC Senior Editor Harish Jonnalagadda delves into all things hardware, including phones, audio products, storage servers, and networking gear.
It’s not often that we see a new entrant in the mobile chipset industry; that’s why it’s exciting to see Xiaomi roll out its Xring 01 platform. Qualcomm and MediaTek effectively have a duopoly in this regard, and although Samsung is still chugging along with its Exynos designs, it isn’t anywhere close to what the other two chip vendors manage to deliver on a consistent basis.
Google is doing a decent job with its Tensor portfolio, but these products are customized to focus on AI and not necessarily deliver the best power. That isn’t the case with the Xring 01; Xiaomi is clearly positioning it as a rival to the best that Qualcomm and MediaTek have to offer; the chipset built on a second-gen TSMC 3nm node, and comes with a 10-core CPU and 16-core Arm Immortalis-G925 GPU.
Xiaomi is using Arm’s v9.2 cores, and the 10-core design gives it a distinct edge over its rivals, which have stuck to an octa-core configuration for a while now. The Xring 01 uses two Cortex X925 cores clocked at 3.9GHz, a quartet of Cortex A725 cores at 3.4GHz, two additional A725 cores at 1.9GHz, and two Cortex A520 cores at 1.8GHz. The manufacturer is leveraging Arm’s CoreLink Interconnect system to make the most of the tri-core architecture.
Similarly, thanks to 16 shader cores in the Immortalis-G925, Xiaomi is able to claim a definite win over MediaTek — which uses 12 cores in its Dimensity 9400. That’s not all; it gets Xiaomi’s own ISP (now in its fourth generation), and a 6-core NPU with 44 TOPS — similar to what Qualcomm is offering on the 8 Elite. Xiaomi notes that this is just the start in a decade-long investment that’s set to exceed 6.9 billion USD, with 2,500 engineers working in its chip division.
Xiaomi dabbled in custom chip design with the Surge S1 back in 2017, but that was aimed at the budget category, and it isn’t anything as ambitious as what the manufacturing is doing now. In fact, Xiaomi is so confident about what it has achieved that it slotted in the Xring 01 in its latest products: the Xiaomi 15S Pro and Pad 7 Ultra tablet.
The 15S Pro is identical to the 15 Pro that debuted at the end of last year, with the only key difference being the switch to the Xring 01 silicon. The phone has a new design and comes with 512GB of UFS 4.1 storage as standard (instead of 256GB), and Xiaomi is limiting it to China.
The Pad 7 Ultra is of greater interest to me, as the tablet gets an oversized 14-inch OLED panel — a considerable upgrade from the 11.2-inch LCD-toting Pad 7 and Pad 7 Pro. It also has a massive 12,000mAh battery, and I’m excited to get my hands on it to see what the Xring 01 is able to deliver in a device of this size.
I’m interested in testing two things with the Xring 01: how the modem holds up, and battery efficiency. Xiaomi doesn’t have an integrated modem, and is instead using an external MediaTek T800 modem that’s built on a 4nm node. The use of an external modem usually affects battery efficiency, and it will be interesting to see how it runs in real-world scenarios against Qualcomm and MediaTek rivals.
I haven’t gotten my hands on the 15S Pro yet, but Chinese YouTuber Geekerwan did extensive testing of the Xring 01 (the video is in Mandarin, but it has English subtitles) and found that it does better than the Dimensity 9400. Interestingly, the CPU has energy efficiency in line with what Qualcomm and MediaTek are delivering, and that’s an achievement in and of itself.
However, testing the battery efficiency showed that the use of an external modem affected battery life, with the Qualcomm-based model lasting 40 minutes longer in the same test. Ultimately, Xiaomi needs to make its own 5G modem, and given how difficult that has proven to be for anyone other than Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Samsung, we’ll just have to wait and see how the Chinese manufacturer does in this area.
In addition to the Xring 01, Xiaomi unveiled the Xring T1, a smartwatch platform that will see a decent amount of use on the brand’s wearables. The timing of this announcement is interesting as it comes just a week after Xiaomi and Qualcomm released a joint statement extending their 15-year partnership, and confirming that upcoming Xiaomi flagships will continue to use Qualcomm silicon.
While it’s entirely possible that Xiaomi uses Qualcomm for phones it releases globally, it’s clear that the brand is positioning its own designs for devices that are exclusive to its home market. That’s a significant shift in strategy, and at least based on the hardware the brand has detailed thus far, it’s clear that the Xring 01 is able to hold its own against the Dimensity 9400 and Qualcomm’s flagship silicon.
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