Xiaomi Pinecone Chipset Release Date, Specs News: Smartphone Manufacturer to Launch In-House Processor on Feb. 28

By Georgia Gana, Christian Post Contributor Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Xiaomi may be skipping the Mobile World Congress trade show next week but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have anything in store for consumers. The Chinese electronics company has confirmed the launch of its first in-house chipset, called Pinecone, which will be introduced during a press event in Beijing on Tuesday, Feb. 23.

According to Engadget, Xiaomi has been working with chipmaker Leadcore since November 2014. This partnership will allow Xiaomi to use Leadcore's cellular radio technology instead of relying on chips from Qualcomm and MediaTek for their mobile devices. Xiaomi using in-house processors will also help keep down production costs and increase profits.

Once the Pinecone chipset is launched, Xiaomi will join the likes of Samsung, Apple and Huawei, which produce their own processors known as Exynos, A-series and Kirin, respectively. However, it was noted that Pinecone is a direct translation from Chinese so Xiaomi could opt to use a different name for its processor.

Xiaomi uploaded a promotional image on Chinese microblogging website Weibo to tease the upcoming event but, unfortunately, no specific details about the processor have been revealed.

Nevertheless, according to Gizmochina, there will be two variants of the Pinecone processor. The first goes by the model number V670 and has four Cortex-A53 large cores and four Cortex-A53 small cores. It will be mated to the Mali-T860 MP4 graphics processing unit (GPU) with a clock speed 800 MHz and is said to utilize the 28-nm manufacturing process.

Meanwhile, the second variant, V970, is expected to arrive in the fourth quarter of this year. It will have an octa-core architecture with four Cortex-A73 cores and four Cortex-A53 cores. It is said to have a minimum clock speed of 2.0 GHz and a maximum clock speed of 2.7 GHz. The processor will be accompanied by the Mali G71 MP12 GPU with a clock speed of 900 MHz.

It is also rumored that Xiaomi will introduce a new smartphone, believed to be the Mi 5c, during its press event next week. If so, it could be the first device to sport the Pinecone processor.

The launch of the Xiaomi Pinecone chipset could lead to a more promising future for the company. It was reported that Xiaomi recently replaced Apple in fourth place as the most successful smartphone company in China.