Xiaomi Working on a Mid-Range Smartphone with a Snapdragon 660 SoC

.Xiaomi is one of the biggest surprises of the last couple of years. The Chinese startup may not have impressed at first, but now it seems it’s ready to take on a larger slice of the pie. Even before, it had a large lineup of affordable smartphones, and now the company is preparing to launch even more models. The next one in line is most likely the Redmi Note 4X. This will look a lot like the previously launched Redmi Note 4. It will also have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 chipset. The Mi 5C is also getting ready for its big launch. This smartphone will feature the company’s own Pinecone V670 SoC. The upcoming Xiaomi Mi6 will come with both Snapdragon 835 and Pinecone V970 SoC’s.

Even though these models would be enough for one season normally, it seems that Xiaomi won’t stop here. According to Gizchina, the company is also preparing to launch a fourth model. We don’t know the moniker of the new handset, it seems that it will feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 SoC. This processor uses Samsung’s 14nnm LLP process technology. It is an octa-core chipset and offers a frequency range of 1.9GHz – 2.2GHz. Everyone expects this chipset to perform a lot better than last year’s Snapdragon 820 SoC on the AnTuTu benchmarks.

The production of the chipset will only start in the second quarter of this year, so it’s safe to say that the Xiaomi model with this particular processor won’t launch earlier. Most likely, we sill get to see this chipset coming in a new Redmi model, or in the next Xiaomi Max model. It will definitely power a mid-ranger, there’s no uncertainty there. If there will be another Mi Mix, it will probably get an even better chipset and a lot higher price tag.

It seems that the Chinese company is slowly, but steadily moving higher on the ladder of smartphone manufacturers. It offers a great variety of models with more than decent features for affordable prices. The quality of these smartphones might not be as high as those of more expensive models, but they do seem to be quite reliable. And let’s face it, they are downright cheap, not even affordable. We expect to see even more models on the market soon.