Huawei's MWC 2014 smartphone reveal could be the eight-core Ascend D3

A new rumor says that China-based Huawei will be bringing its next high-end smartphone, the Ascend D3, to this year's MWC. Reportedly, it will run on an in-house produced Kirin 920 octa-core CPU clocked at 1.8GHz. The chip is based on ARM's big.LITTLE architecture, which is built on two pairs of cores - four slower and four faster-working. It's manufactured on a 28nm process, and has four Cortex A7 and four Cortex A9 processors.

This isn't exactly bleeding-edge technology, but Huawei probably knows what it's doing with it. However, we don't see its new CPU living up to MediaTek's Cortex A17-based MT6595 eight-headed monster that the Taiwanese silicone slinger revealed this week. According to ARM, the A17 cores are 60% faster and more power efficient than the aging Cortex-A9, which debuted six years ago. Not only are Huawei's A7 and A9 cores older, but they aren't able to work all at once.

Other Ascend D3-related rumors, dating from the end of 2013, describe a 16MP rear camera, a 5-inch 1080p display, and a metal back. Oh, and we have these snazzy photos from last December. They are worth taking a look at, even if they turn out to represent a different device.

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source: Huawei News via Unwired View and IntoMobile