Huawei's Mate 90 Debut Brings Back the Kirin 9000 Chip

Huawei's Mate 90 series product launch event took place today, and it included a big callback to Huawei's history. During the event, the song "Dream It Possible" was sung again, this time by singer Grace Kinstler. His performance was acompanied by the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra and a choir. The performance has become something like a tradition at Huawei's launches over the years by this point. So you could expect something simmilar again the next time :).

While the music played, Huawei paired the Kinstler's show with an animated video, walking through the evolution of its Mate lineup. This show covered the full range of Mate design history, from the traditional candybar style to the brand's dual-fold and tri-fold phones, giving the audience an animated timeline of how far the series has come.

The biggest and the most notable moment came when Huawei displayed its line of Kirin 9-series chips, starting with the Kirin 970 and closing with the Kirin 9000 5G. It has been several years since the Kirin 9000 has appeared on stage at a Huawei launch event.

The Kirin 9000 holds a lot of history. Released in 2020, it was the world's first 5-nanometer chip with a built-in 5G modem, packing 15.3 billion transistors, and it debuted inside the Mate 40 series. After its release, Huawei went some years without launching a new Kirin 9-series flagship chip. That was because of the US sanctions restricting access to advanced chip manufacturing. The Kirin 9-series only returned in 2023, when Huawei unexpectedly launched the Mate 60 series without any announcement.

During the launch Huawei said that they are going into what they call a new chip era. They unveiled two types of new Kirin processors: flagship-tier chips, including the Kirin 9030 and Kirin 9035, and a newer logic-folding chip's the Kirin 9050 and Kirin 9050 Pro. These new chips are expected to power different tiers across the Mate 90 lineup. The advanced logic-folding chips tho, will be only used with the premium Mate model's.

Huawei clearly want's this new Mate generation to be special. With all these new chip's and the callback to the Kirin 9000 it's both a tribute and a sign of whats coming for the Mate series in the future.