While the company used Qualcomm Snapdragon parts in its recent flagship designs, including the new XIaomi Note, next year’s devices could end up with MediaTek silicon instead.

10 cores are the new black

According to Digitimes, Xiaomi is “likely” to switch to MediaTek’s upcoming Helio X20 processor.

The Helio X20 is a 10-core design, with two big Cortex-A72 cores, backed by two clusters of four Cortex-A53 cores. In addition to being the first deca-core mobile chip, the Helio X20 is likely to be MediaTek’s first 20nm part as well.

The chip also features Cat 6 LTE connectivity, which is an improvement over Cat 4 modems used in MediaTek’s current SoC line-up.

Hold your horses

Although this sounds like great news for MediaTek, there are a few caveats. First of all, the reports cannot be confirmed yet. Secondly, the Helio X20 is expected to sample in late Q3, and ship in late Q4.

This means we won’t see many devices based on the new chip this year. Early 2016 sounds realistic, so chances are Xiaomi will soldier on with Qualcomm chips this year.

The upside is that Xiaomi is emulated by many smaller Chinese smartphone outfits – if it decides to use MediaTek’s new chip, chances are many of them will follow suit.