Xiaomi to announce its “Pinecone” mobile chipset Feb 28

PanARMENIAN.Net - Following reports from earlier this month, Xiaomi confirmed on Weibo that it will be announcing its very own mobile chipset, named after its subsidiary "Pinecone", in Beijing on February 28th. Little else is mentioned, but rumors going as far back as October are pointing to a Mi 5c aka "Meri" as the first device to carry this chip. Multiple Geekbench results suggest that the phone features an octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM and runs on Android 7.1.1 (even though the leaked prototypes still show Android 6.0), Engadget reports.

Xiaomi's chipset plan isn't exactly a secret. According to Chinese semiconductor expert Laoyao, Pinecone Electronics is a joint venture set up by Xiaomi and chipset maker Leadcore back in November 2014, with Xiaomi owning 51 percent of the shares. In other words, this project has been under way for over two years. What this means is that rather than fully relying on the likes of Qualcomm and MediaTek, Xiaomi can take advantage of Leadcore's cellular radio technology for its own chipsets, thus keeping costs down in the long term.

Once Xiaomi gets comfortable with its chip production, it can potentially integrate more features into its future chipsets to stand out from the crowded mobile market -- much like what Samsung, Apple and Huawei have been doing. That said, it'll still be a while before we see how good Pinecone really is, Engadget said.