Two Chinese phone makers are telling very different chip stories right now. Xiaomi just dropped the 15S Pro with its first self-designed flagship SoC, the Xuanjie O1 (玄戒O1). Huawei launched the Pura 80 series with the Kirin 9020, a chip that is still on a mature node and carries the weight of four years of sanctions. One is sprinting toward 3nm. The other is proving you can still win without the latest fab.
I have been watching both. Here is what the teardowns and benchmarks say.
Xiaomi’s Xuanjie O1: not a copy, not perfect
The Xuanjie O1 is built on TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process (N3P), the same node Apple uses for the A18 Pro. It packs 19 billion transistors at a density of 180 million per square millimeter. That is desktop-class numbers in a phone chip.
CPU layout is a 10-core four-cluster design: two Cortex-X925 prime cores at up to 3.9GHz, four A725 performance cores, two low-frequency A725 efficiency cores, and two A520 tiny cores. The GPU is an Immortalis-G925 with 16 cores, running at 1392MHz. There is no system-level cache (SLC), which is an unusual choice. Xiaomi instead gave each unit bigger private caches. The NPU hits 44 TOPS.
Benchmarks from 电子工程专辑 and 品玩 put Geekbench 6 single-core around 2886-3049 and multi-core around 9066-9430. AnTuTu scores range from 2.48 million to 2.72 million depending on who is testing and whether they are in a lab or a room at 27 degrees. The GPU is strong. GFXBench Aztec 1080P hits 233 FPS in some tests.
But here is the catch: the 5G modem is not Xiaomi’s. It is a MediaTek T800 (MT6980W) on 4nm, bolted on externally. Xiaomi has a 4G baseband called Xuanjie T1, but 5G is still outsourced. That is the honest reality. Designing a modem is harder than designing a CPU. Everyone knows it.
Pricing for the 15S Pro starts at 5499 RMB for 16GB+512GB, or 4999 RMB after the national subsidy (国补). The 1TB top model is 5999 RMB. Xiaomi is limiting sales to authorized stores and forcing in-store activation, the same tactic Huawei used with the Mate 60. The message is clear: supply is tight, and they do not want scalpers.
Huawei’s Kirin 9020: old node, new tricks
Huawei launched the Pura 80 series on June 11. The Ultra and Pro+ models run the Kirin 9020. It is a 1+3+4 layout: one Taishan big core at 2.5GHz, three Taishan mid cores at 2.15GHz, and four small cores at 1.6GHz. GPU is the Maleoon 920 at 840MHz.
Richard Yu said the Pura 80 series is 36% faster overall and 47% smoother in daily use than the Pura 70 Pro+ with the Kirin 9010. That is a solid generational jump on what is almost certainly SMIC’s 7nm-class process. Some reports call it a 6nm or 5nm equivalent, but I do not buy those labels. SMIC is working with DUV, not EUV. The node is what it is.
The Pura 80 Ultra starts at 9999 RMB and goes up to 10999 RMB. This is not a mass-market play. It is a camera-first flagship with a 1-inch main sensor and a dual-telephoto system Huawei calls “one lens, two eyes” (一镜双目). The chip is good enough for the target buyer. That is the calculation.
The bigger picture: two paths, one goal
Xiaomi took the TSMC route. Huawei is stuck on domestic fabs. Both are trying to reduce reliance on foreign silicon, but their timelines differ by years.
CounterPoint Research predicts that in 2025, advanced-process smartphone SoCs (7nm and below) will make up over 50% of shipments for the first time. That is the global trend. But in China, the split is more interesting. You have Xiaomi on 3nm TSMC, Huawei on mature domestic nodes, and MediaTek shipping 3nm Dimensity 9500 chips to OPPO and vivo. The supply chain is fragmenting along geopolitical lines.
Meantime, the car chip story is running in parallel. At the 2025 Shanghai Auto Show, domestic chip vendors like Black Sesame (黑芝麻智能) and Biwin Storage (佰维存储) were swamped with OEM meetings. BYD is already using all-Chinese power semiconductors in the Seal, per a UBS teardown. The auto white list 2.0 from the China Automotive Chip Alliance covers over 1800 products and 2000 use cases. Cars are becoming the safer bet for domestic chip volume.
Back to phones. Xiaomi’s Xuanjie O1 is a real chip, with a real custom layout. 电子工程专辑’s die shot analysis confirms the CPU and GPU arrangement looks nothing like Apple, Qualcomm, or MediaTek designs. It is not a re-badge. But it is also not beating the Snapdragon 8 Elite or A18 Pro in raw performance. It is competitive. That is already a huge step for a first attempt.
Huawei’s Kirin 9020 shows what you can do when you control the full stack: OS, compiler, ISP, NPU, and chip. HarmonyOS squeezes more out of less silicon than Android does. That is not marketing. That is engineering.
My take? Xiaomi just proved it can design a flagship SoC. Huawei proved it can survive without one from TSMC. Both matter. Neither is enough on its own. The real test for Xiaomi is whether it sticks with chip R&D when the costs pile up. The real test for Huawei is whether SMIC can close the node gap before the performance deficit becomes visible to mainstream users.
One more thing: the global smartphone growth forecast for 2025 just got cut from 4.2% to 1.9% by CounterPoint, thanks to tariff noise. In that environment, every R&D dollar counts more. Xiaomi spent years on this chip. I hope they have the stomach to spend years more.