Xiaomi had earlier confirmed that it would launch more chipsets in the future, and the next one in the pipeline is the Surge S2 chipset. The Chinese company is now rumoured to launch the Surge S2 SoC at the Mobile World Congress 2018 (MWC) event next month in Barcelona. The same rumour suggests that the performance of the Surge S2 will be on-par with Huawei's Kirin 960 SoC. The Surge S2 is expected to feature an octa-core CPU and may be manufactured using TSMC's 16nm process.
The Surge S1 SoC was launched back in February 2017 and Xiaomi's CEO Lei Jun confirmed the company is planning to launch more chipsets in the future. Also, the Surge S1 was a mid-range chipset, but the Surge S2 is claimed to be much powerful than the Surge S1. The Surge S2 SoC is expected to feature four Cortex A73 cores clocked at 2.2 GHz, and other four Cortex A53 will be clocked at 1.8GHz.
The Xiaomi Surge S2 chipset may come with Mali G71 MP8 GPU for handling graphics, and it may not have support for CDMA networks. The chipset is also said to have support for UFS 2.1 storage and LPDDR4 RAM. These rumoured specifications suggest the chipset will be equally powerful as the Kirin 960 chipset, which was a flagship SoC for Huawei for the entire 2017.
Other reports highlight that the Surge S2 will first make an appearance at the MWC 2018 event, but the smartphone to make use of Xiaomi' second chipset is the Xiaomi Mi 6X, and not the Mi 6C as rumoured earlier.
The Xiaomi Mi 6X will be a successor to the Mi 5X launched back in July 2017. The Mi 5X arrived with Snapdragon 625 SoC under the hood, but it's interesting to see Xiaomi choosing the Surge S2 chipset for the Mi 6X. However, these are just rumours, and there's no official confirmation from the Chinese company though. Also, to be a noted, the Mi 6X may be launched as the Mi A2 smartphone across the globe. Recent reports suggest that the Mi 6X will feature vertically positioned dual cameras at the back and a metal body.
At the MWC 2018, Xiaomi is expected to launch a new smartphone, dubbed as Mi Mix 2S with a notch on the top. The Mi Mix 2S could be the company's first flagship smartphone for 2018, and it may land in India right after the launch at the MWC 2018. Furthermore, reports suggest that the Xiaomi Mi 7 launch may not happen until April or May 2018.