Xiaomi Releases First In-house Chipset Surge S1c Via Mi5C; How Does It Differ From Its Competition?

Chinese smartphone mega manufacturer Xiaomi Inc has finally responded to what its competitors such as Apple Inc, Samsung Electronics and Huawei Technologies are excelling at nowadays in the hardware department — its very first in-house chipset. And just like their flair in presentation, the firm has announced this game-changing development via its newly unveiled Xiaomi Mi 5C.

The Indian Express reports that Xiaomi has now introduced its "Surge S1" chipset that will also be powering the forthcoming Xiaomi Mi 5C. Its the company's first smartphone to be powered by the firm's own SoC chipset. In addition, the chipset is the tech player's first in-house that is built with Pinecone electronics, a company that is currently owned by the smartphone maker.

Xiaomi's Surge S1 features an octa-core ARM cortex A53 processor that is incorporated with four 2.2GHz cores and four 1.4GHz cores. Meanwhile, this SoC also is armed with an integrated Mali T-860 MP4 GPU that will up the chipset's graphics performance in gaming. The chipset is also noted for its support for 4K videos and its 32-bit DSP for high quality audio and voice calls.

Surge S1 is also equipped with dual microphones specially designed to reduce noise on the device. It likewise comprises of the integrated 14-bit dual ISP along with its very own ISP algorithm that is known to improve camera light sensitivity by up to 150 percent.

As per Xiaomi, the process of creating the Surge S1 chipset has taken it 28 months to make. But that long process seems to be all worth it as the chipset is now beating Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 and MediaTek Helio P20 in terms of performance, as per GSMArena.

Xiaomi's decision to announce its very first in-house chipset is not only groundbreaking in terms of the company's technological competitiveness. It would also mean that Xiaomi may now be ready to move away from MediaTek and Qualcomm which in essence is a breakthrough for a company that aspires greater control over its hardware and customizations into their devices.