Very few smartphone makers are in the custom chip business, and there aren’t that many that even want to be there, since it is an entirely different aspect of business to learn to manage. Xiaomi, the second largest Android manufacturer in the world, and the biggest in China, certainly saw no reason to shy away from the challenge.
Today, the company has unveiled its XRING O1 smartphone processor, marking its first-ever flagship chip. We’ve seen Samsung and Google try at a flagship-grade processor, and while they aren’t horrible, it’s hard to say that they match up with the best entries from Qualcomm or MediaTek. Xiaomi might change that narrative for good.
The XRING O1 Is Packed to the Seams With Power
A few days ago, we pored over the leaked Geekbench results of Xiaomi’s XRING O1, and quite surprisingly, it demonstrated a lot of power. In fact, it was specced out in a way that presented a bit of doubt in my mind. Today, the aspects that I doubted have been confirmed, and the chip is officially a beast, at least on paper.
The XRING O1 brings an uncommon ten-core CPU design, built on a 3nm process just like the very best. The layout of the CPU cores goes like this:
- 2 x Cortex-X925 cores clocked at 3.9GHz (with 2MB L2 cache each)
- 6 x Cortex-A725 cores (with 1MB L2 cache each):
- 4 x clock speed of 3.4GHz
- 2 x clock speed of 1.9GHz
- 2 x Cortex-A520 cores clocked at 1.8GHz (with shared 512KB L2 cache)
Two prime cores at such a high frequency is crazy work, but with plenty of efficiency-focused cores, battery life might not be a big downside of this chip as I initially suspected. Plus, that’s backed up by the Arm Immortalis-G925 MC16 GPU, which has 16 cores. Let’s not forget the 6-core NPU for all of your AI needs.
Xiaomi’s First Chip Seems Set to Rival Qualcomm and MediaTek’s Best
Whether the XRING O1 will absolutely floor the Snapdragon 8 Elite and the Dimensity 9400 in production models is yet to be seen, but it will certainly surpass expectations and go toe-to-toe with them, especially if you take Xiaomi’s benchmarks to heart. In terms of AnTuTu scores, here’s how things compare.
| Position | Chip | AnTuTu Score |
| 1 | Xiaomi XRING O1 (Official) | 3,004,137 |
| 2 | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite | 2,684,695 |
| 3 | Xiaomi XRING O1 (User-Tested) | 2,535,163 |
| 4 | MediaTek Dimensity 9400 | 2,471,419 |
Of course, it is smarter to focus on the user-tested score, as Xiaomi’s score will likely optimize things in ways that a regular user can’t or won’t. Even at that, beating the Dimensity 9400 is incredibly significant.
The Xiaomi 15S Pro and Xiaomi Pad 7 Ultra Launch the New Processor
Xiaomi’s new 15S Pro is the first smartphone to launch with its in-house flagship chip, and across the tablet divide, it is the Xiaomi Pad 7 Ultra.
The Xiaomi 15S Pro does everything almost the same as the regular Xiaomi 15 Pro, though it brings UFS 4.1 storage and a new chipset. Plus, that Composite Fiber Edition looks absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, both the phone and the tablet will only be available to buyers in China.
