Huawei is set to launch the Mate 80 series smartphones in China soon. The lineup is rumored to debut with the Kirin 9030 chip, which should deliver better performance than the Kirin 9020 used in the Mate 70.
A new leak from China now claims that the chip might also power a gaming phone. Chinese tipster Satsuna Digital on Weibo suggests that the Kirin 9030 could appear inside a gaming-focused Huawei phone sometime in early 2026.
However, the same tipster also claims that the Kirin 9030 will be built on a process “equivalent to 3nm,” which is where things start to fall apart. China currently doesn’t have access to the advanced EUV tools needed to mass-produce chips at or below the 5nm level.
SMIC, the semiconductor company that manufactures Huawei’s chips, is still relying on older equipment and has so far only managed to ship chips made on a 7nm process. There have been occasional reports of progress toward a 5nm node, but developing something in a lab is very different from producing millions of units at consistent yields.
Because China is restricted from purchasing next-generation EUV machines, there’s no clear path for SMIC to jump to anything close to the 3nm technology used by companies like TSMC. And unless China’s in-house EUV project makes sudden breakthroughs, a 3nm-class Kirin chip simply isn’t realistic today.
Performance expectations for the Kirin 9030 also suggest a more grounded picture. Early speculation points to speeds somewhere between Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
This puts Huawei comfortably behind the newest flagship chips, including the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, MediaTek’s Dimensity 9500, Apple’s A19 Pro, and Samsung’s upcoming Exynos 2600.
Still, a new Kirin chip is always a big deal for Huawei fans, especially after years of supply-chain struggles.
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