Xiaomi unveils its own in-house octa-core Surge S1 chipset, which powers the new Xiaomi Mi 5c

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi became the fourth such company to produce its own line of chipsets when it unveiled the Surge S1 today. Built with the big.LITTLE architecture, the Surge S1 is made up of four 2.2GHz Cortex-A53 cores to handle tough tasks. Four 1.4GHz Cortex-A53 cores work on the light housekeeping. The result is an octa-core CPU and the Mali T-860 MP4 GPU. The latter uses 40% less energy than the previous generation Mali GPU. A 32-bit DSP supports VoLTE and high quality calls, even in a noisy environment.

One of the best things about producing your own chipset in-house is that you can quickly introduce the first phone to be powered by the SoC. And sure enough, that is exactly what Xiaomi did when it  introduced the Xiaomi Mi 5c. Sporting a 5.15-inch display with a 1600 x 2560 resolution, the phone has the Surge S1 chipset under the hood. Surprise! The chipset can quickly match the brightness of the screen to ambient light levels. There is a 12MP rear-facing camera, and the phone supports 9V2A fast charging. It also weighs in at 7.09mm thin.


The Xiaomi Mi 5c will launch in China on March 3rd, priced at the equivalent of $218 USD. The phone will be available from Mi.com, Suning’s online site, and Tmall. It will also be found at all Mi Home stores and Suning offline stores.


source: Xiaomi