At least one of Xiaomi's flagship phones in 2018 will run on Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 845 chipset. The chipmaker announced its newest platform at the Qualcomm Tech Summit in Hawaii a few hours ago, and had Xiaomi's CEO, Lei Jun on stage, confirming its association.
Jun said that Xiaomi's next premium smartphone will run on the Snapdragon 845. "Six years ago, we launched the Xiaomi Mi 1 using Qualcomm's processor, which was the best at the time. Over the years, the flagship phones all adopted the top-tier Qualcomm processor," he said.
Now, Jun didn't actually clarify which particular Xiaomi flagship will sport the chipset. But then again, the company doesn't really make just one flagship per year, does it?
Speculations are that the Xiaomi Mi 7 will run on this processor, but it wouldn't be surprising if next year's Mi Mix and Mi Note phones also run the same chipset. This year's Mi Mix 2 runs on the Snapdragon 835, while the Mi Note 2 (sold in China last year) ran on the Snapdragon 821, Qualcomm's flagship chipset at the time.
Interestingly, Qualcomm itself hasn't revealed much about the Snapdragon 845. We expected the chipset to sport Qualcomm's X20 LTE modem, and it will be built on the 10nm process. Yet, you should expect an evolutionary upgrade over the Snapdragon 835.