Huawei unveils Kirin 9050 Pro chip, launches Mate XT 2 tri-fold phone

A presentation screen introduces Huawei’s Kirin 9050 Pro chip during the company’s product launch today in Guangzhou. People's Daily

Huawei unveiled its new Kirin 9050 Pro smartphone processor at a flagship product launch in Guangzhou today, pairing the chip with its latest tri-fold handset, the Mate XT 2 Ultimate Design.

The Mate XT 2 starts at 19,999 yuan and will go on sale at 10:08 a.m. Sept. 12. Huawei said the new model delivers a 42% increase in overall device performance compared with its predecessor.

Kirin returns to center stage

Today's event marked Huawei’s most detailed public presentation of a flagship Kirin processor since the Mate 40 series launch in 2020, ending a six-year gap in such disclosures at its major handset events.

The Kirin 9050 Pro uses Huawei’s new LogicFolding architecture, which stacks logic elements vertically within a single chip. Huawei says the design allows more transistors to fit into the same area while improving performance and energy efficiency.

Huawei Executive Director and Consumer Business Group Chairman Richard Yu speaks during the company’s product launch today in Guangzhou. Photo from WeChat account "荆楚网"

According to a paper released Sept. 4 on a Chinese Academy of Sciences preprint platform, the Kirin 9050 Pro packs about 238 million transistors per square millimeter, up from about 155 million in the previous Kirin 9030 Pro generation, an increase of roughly 55%.

The paper, attributed to Huawei board member and semiconductor business chief Teresa He, said the chip also cut power consumption under matched-performance workloads. Huawei reported reductions of 66% for the neural processing unit, 58% for the graphics processing unit and 41% for the CPU performance core compared with the previous planar design.

The Kirin 9050 Pro also incorporates Huawei’s Linxi CPU, Maliang GPU and Da Vinci architecture NPU. Huawei said the chip improves large-file loading, multitasking, graphics rendering and on-device artificial intelligence.

Mate XT 2 starts at 19,999 yuan

Huawei displays pricing and color options for the Mate XT 2 Ultimate Design during it launch event today in Guangzhou. The tri-fold smartphone starts at 19,999 yuan.

At the launch, Huawei Executive Director and Consumer Business Group Chairman Richard Yu said the Mate XT 2’s starting price is 2,000 yuan higher than that of the previous Mate XTs model, citing a rapid rise in memory prices.

Yu also said Huawei’s tri-fold smartphones have surpassed 1 million units in global shipments. The figure was provided by Huawei and was not independently verified.

The event was also the first globally livestreamed Huawei flagship launch hosted by Yu in six years, according to information released for the event.