The Pura 70 Pro analysis reveals that the majority of components on Huawei's new smartphone model are made in China.
The dissection of the Huawei Pura 70 Pro was done by iFixit. This repair company performed an in-depth analysis of the Huawei Pura 70 Pro as well as conducted performance benchmarking to test the power of the latest Kirin 9010 from Huawei.
Last month's discovery showed that the Kirin 9010 is very similar to the previous Kirin 9000S, which were both manufactured using SMIC's 7nm (or N+2) process. And iFixit's discovery now shows that the two chips have the same model ID. Even the above modifications are almost identical: GFCV121 for Kirin 9010 and GFCV120 for Kirin 9000S.
iFixit theorizes that the Kirin 9010 is a refreshed Kirin 9000S with potentially higher yield (ratio of good chips to defective chips) and slightly higher performance. It is known that Geekbench performance evaluation shows that Kirin 9010 is about 8% faster than Kirin 9000S, while compared to Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, Kirin 9010 is much slower.
iFixit's discovery also confirms that Huawei is sourcing more components from China, with HiSilicon's own NAND chip having a capacity of 1 TB - storage space not available in Europe. Die analysis shows that Huawei created the memory controller and packaged everything together, but a Chinese manufacturer (possibly YMTC) created this NAND memory chip.
As for DRAM and motion sensors, they are not made in China. In particular, DRAM is manufactured by SK Hynix, while motion sensors are made by Bosch. Huawei may be taking advantage of old components because SK Hynix and Bosch are no longer allowed to sell components to Huawei due to sanctions. Future Pura 70 Pro models may switch to using domestically produced components after using up these inventory components.
Reports indicate that manufacturing Chinese components for smartphones and PCs will not be an easy task for Huawei, even if it can already produce its own processors and internal memory. This stems from insufficient chip production as the company currently relies only on deep ultraviolet (DUV) technology instead of modern extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machines, which help increase productivity and produce more advanced chips. This stems from the fact that the Dutch company ASML produces all the EUV machines in the world and is not allowed to supply machines to China due to sanctions from the US.
Huawei is investing in the production of its own DUV and EUV lithography tools, but it's unclear whether its efforts will pay off. If China's semiconductor industry does not make a breakthrough in manufacturing methods, it will be difficult to produce advanced chips even if companies like Huawei can design them.