Huawei Pura 70 Pro teardown: the 7nm Kirin 9010 is only marginally better than Kirin 9000S, and the majority of the chips are designed and manufactured in China
Huawei released the Pura 70 line of smartphones in April 2024 and it's already made a bit of a stir.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Pura 70 arrived with early reporting that its higher-end models used a newer Kirin processor, while a separate teardown had already identified a 7nm chip similar to the Mate 60's. This teardown adds two consequential details: the performance uplift over the preceding Kirin is slim, but the handset’s chip sourcing is predominantly domestic.
That makes the Pura 70 Pro less a clean performance-node leap than a continuation of the China-fabricated 7nm Kirin established in the Mate 60 Pro, with broader evidence of local design and manufacturing participation.
First-order effects
- Huawei’s Pura 70 Pro is shown to use a 7nm Kirin 9010 whose gains over the Kirin 9000S are marginal, limiting the immediate case for a major processor-performance upgrade.
- The finding that most chips are designed and made in China gives Huawei a more domestically rooted component base in this model, corroborating the earlier identification of a 7nm Pura 70 chip.
Second-order effects
- Huawei and its component partners have evidence to prioritize continuity and sourcing depth around the existing 7nm platform rather than portray the 9010 as a major generational performance break.
- For buyers and competitors, Pura 70 differentiation is likely to rest more on the complete handset and supply-chain positioning than on a clear Kirin performance advantage alone.
Third-order effects
- If subsequent devices sustain a high domestic-content mix, smartphone competition in China could increasingly hinge on the ability to assemble dependable local component ecosystems, not solely access to the newest process nodes.
- The marginal 9010 improvement also illustrates a likely trade-off in this path: supply-chain localization can advance even when leading-edge chip performance progresses incrementally.
The trend: Huawei’s Pura line is one data point in the broader push to build domestically designed and manufactured smartphone supply chains while extending mature-node chip capabilities.