The competition for flagship phone chips has just introduced another heavyweight contender.
Xiaomi
The competition in the mobile chip market has become quite intense. Qualcomm boasts its Snapdragon series, Apple has its A-series chips, MediaTek's Dimensity range has emerged as a true high-end option, and Samsung is making significant strides with its Exynos line. Despite Google's efforts, its Tensor chip has not managed to match the raw performance of these competitors.
Now, there is another chip eager for recognition. Xiaomi has officially introduced the XRing O3, its second-generation flagship smartphone processor, and the proposed specifications are hard to ignore. This 3nm chip achieved a score of 5,228,014 in AnTuTu V11, with Xiaomi claiming it is currently the fastest smartphone SoC available, although independent testing is still needed to confirm this assertion. Nevertheless, the benchmark results released are quite impressive.
Ten large cores with impressive specifications
Vikhyaat Vivek / Digital Trends
The XRing O3 features an aggressive 10-core, all-big-core CPU design. It consists of two C1-Ultra cores operating at up to 4.35GHz, four C1-Premium cores clocked at 3.68GHz, and four C1-Pro cores with a peak of 3.15GHz. Xiaomi reports Geekbench 6.5 scores of 3,945 for single-core performance and 15,221 for multi-core, reflecting enhancements of 31% and 61% compared to the previous XRing O1. The company also states that power usage may decrease by up to 25% during low-to-medium workloads.
The new 16-core Mali-G2 Ultra NX GPU reportedly achieved a score of 4,567 in 3DMark Steel Nomad Lite, marking an 85% increase compared to previous generations. Its result in Solar Bay Extreme reached 3,628, with Xiaomi claiming a 182% improvement over the XRing O1 and a 63% lead over Apple's A19 Pro.
Phone chips are hitting remarkable levels
The GPU includes dedicated neural components enabling AI-driven resolution upscaling and frame generation directly in the graphics pipeline. According to Xiaomi, games can internally render at 540p before being upscaled to 1080p while utilizing 20% less power than rendering at native 1080p. Additionally, it can create extra frames to convert 60fps output into 120fps.
Xiaomi
A revamped four-core NPU claims to deliver 200 TOPS, while this chip becomes the first smartphone SoC to support LPDDR6 memory, achieving a maximum bandwidth of 113.8GB/s. The entire chip comprises 24 billion transistors on a 133mm² die manufactured using TSMC's N3P process.
The XRing O3 will make its debut in September with the Xiaomi 18 Fold and Pad 9 Pro Max. Reports from Reuters indicate that Xiaomi is continuing to develop its own silicon partly to gain more control over essential components and lessen reliance on suppliers like Qualcomm and MediaTek.
Vikhyaat Vivek is a tech journalist and reviewer with seven years of experience covering consumer hardware, with a focus on…
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The competition for flagship phone chips has just introduced another heavyweight contender.
A recently unveiled 3nm smartphone processor boasts unprecedented CPU and GPU performance, supports LPDDR6, offers 200 TOPS of AI computing power, and achieves an AnTuTu V11 score exceeding 5.2 million.