MADISON, Wis., Feb. 16, 2017 – China insiders weren't surprised when Xiaomi went vertical, designing its own smartphone SoC, as reported last week by the Wall Street Journal. This was a move foreshadowed two years ago with the arrival at Xiaomi of a team of engineers originally from Leadcore Technology.
The new wrinkle is that Xiaomi's home-grown custom-designed SoC will drive its soon-to-be-unveiled Mi5C smartphone, according to Alice Sun, formerly an analyst at EE Times China (Shenzhen) and now a founder of EE Insight.
Xiaomi's new SoC, based on eight Arm A53 cores, is capable of LTE Cat 6, Sun told us.