For years, Xiaomi’s been hinting at building its own chip. Whispers, rumors, scattered leaks. But this week, it finally crossed the threshold from speculation to reality. CEO Lei Jun took to Weibo and made it official: Xiaomi’s first in-house smartphone chip is coming. It’s called the XRING 01, and it’ll be unveiled in late May.
Now, for a company that’s long leaned on Qualcomm and MediaTek, this isn’t just another spec-sheet announcement. It’s a strategic play — the kind that could reshape how Xiaomi designs and optimizes its flagship phones going forward. That said, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There’s still a lot we don’t know. But here’s what we do.
So, what’s inside the XRING 01?
If the leaks are to be believed (and at this point, they seem credible enough), the chip’s been in development for over ten years. Ten years. That’s a long runway, even by semiconductor standards. Reportedly, it’s built on TSMC’s N4P process — a 4nm node, which puts it in the same class as some of the premium silicon out there today. Performance-wise, the architecture follows a 1+3+4 core layout:
- One Cortex-X925 core at 3.2GHz
- Three Cortex-A725 cores at 2.6GHz
- Four Cortex-A520 efficiency cores at 2.0GHz
That’s fairly standard among modern flagship SoCs. Not cutting-edge, but solid.
What caught my eye, though, is the GPU: the IMG DXT72 from Imagination Technologies. It’s clocked at 1.3GHz and supposedly outperforms Qualcomm’s Adreno 740 — the same GPU powering last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. If that holds up in real-world testing, it’s a big deal.
Still, we should probably pump the brakes a bit. Even with these specs, the XRING 01 isn’t likely to go toe-to-toe with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Elite or MediaTek’s new Dimensity 9400. And maybe that’s not the point.
It’s not just about performance
Look, the chip’s power matters — of course it does — but the real story here is about control. Xiaomi has always been a hardware-driven company, but it’s had to rely on external silicon for performance tuning, optimization, and release cadence. By building its own SoC, even if it’s only used in select devices, Xiaomi’s taking a step toward deeper integration. Think tighter control over thermal performance, battery life, AI features — all the stuff that makes a phone feel cohesive instead of cobbled together.
It’s the Huawei playbook, honestly. Or maybe Google’s, depending on how you look at it. Samsung, too, has walked this road — though not without stumbling. And while Xiaomi isn’t positioning XRING 01 as a Snapdragon killer (at least, not yet), this could be the first of many chips. An experiment, perhaps. A statement of intent.
When can we expect to see it in a phone?
The XRING 01 is expected to debut with the upcoming Xiaomi 15s. That’s likely to be a limited launch, possibly even China-only at first. If history is any guide, Xiaomi will want to test the waters before rolling this out more widely.
In any case, this is a moment. Xiaomi joins an exclusive club — the fourth smartphone brand globally, and the second in China, to produce its own SoC. Whether it’s a one-off or the start of something bigger, we’ll know soon enough.
But for now? It’s a gutsy move — and one that could shift the company’s trajectory in unexpected ways.
