In February last year, Xiaomi unveiled its very first in-house developed SoC, christened the Surge S1. The smartphone powered the company’s Mi 5c smartphone, which has remained exclusive to the company’s home market so far. Earlier today, a fresh leak on China’s Weibo microblogging site revealed some info regarding Xiaomi’s second-generation in-house SoC, likely dubbed the Surge S2. According to the leak, Xiaomi’s upcoming Surge S2 chip will be powering the Mi 6X, which will be launched as the Mi A2 in global markets such as India. The SoC is tipped to be officially announced at the Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona next month.
Xiaomi Surge S2: Specifications
The mid-range Surge S2 SoC will be manufactured on TSMC’s 16nm process technology, which should allow it to be much more efficient than its predecessor. Like most modern mid-range SoCs, the Surge S2 will feature an octa-core configuration. The four high-performance ARM Cortex-A73 cores will be clocked at 2.2 GHz while the efficiency-oriented ARM Cortex-A53 cores will be clocked lower at 1.8 GHz. Taking care of the graphics processing will be a Mali G71MP8 GPU, a significant upgrade over the Mali-T860MP4 GPU found in the Surge S1. The chipset will also offer support for LPDDR4 memory and the latest UFS 2.1 storage standard. In terms of performance, the Xiaomi Surge S2 will reportedly on par with HiSilicon’s Kirin 960, a flagship mobile SoC announced in October 2016.
Xiaomi Mi 6X / Mi A2
The first smartphone to be powered by Xiaomi’s Surge S2 SoC will be the Mi 6X, successor to the Mi 5X. Xiaomi launched the Mi 5X in global markets as the Mi A1, so it is almost certain that the Mi 6X will arrive in India and a few other markets as the Mi A2. Rumors suggest the smartphone will sport a bezel-less front and retain the dual-camera setup at the back.
