Huawei P9 already being prototyped, new design and chipset in the works

Not long after the Huawei P8 was released to generally great reception, its immediate successor is already being prototyped, claim insiders. The alleged Huawei P9 supposedly has the codename IP03, and features significant changes, most notably a new curved design and a fingerprint scanner positioned on its back panel. Mind you, the translation from Chinese doesn't make it clear whether the phone itself will be curved, or only its screen. For that matter, the screen size points to 5.2-inches, same as on the Huawei P8, but the camera sensor may have grown to a larger 16MP unit with optical image stabilization.

A new chipset is also in tow — the Kirin 950 — reportedly to be fabricated using TSMC's 16nm process. We've already passed along some details about the Kirin 950 that got leaked from HiSilicon's roadmap. If they come true, then the chip will certainly bring a welcome performance increase over the Kirin 930 that keeps the Huawei P8 in motion. The company used to design its Kirin chips with power-efficient ARM cores, chasing a compromise between performance and battery life. That won't be the case with the Kirin 950, though, as this one will be gunning with top-tier Cortex-A72 cores, ARM's latest Mali GPU (possibly the T880), and a duo of image signal processors - because more is always better, right? The chip should be announced in Q4 2015, which means the Huawei P9 will be a 2016 release. That makes sense, considering the Huawei P8 became matter of fact just a few weeks ago.

All things considered, it sounds like Huawei is poised to come up with another interesting smartphone that differentiates itself from the pack. The company certainly has a large pool of resources to tap into in its pursuit to make the P9 a flagship worth talking about.