Typically we save these kinds of full-court-press teardown events for an Apple or a Samsung Galaxy, and no doubt we are gearing up for iPhone X quick-turn teardown this week, but today we are recognizing a mobile phone OEM who is now arguably number 3 in the world – Huawei Technologies.

If you are a Canadian hockey fan, you may have seen the Huawei P10 smartphone advertisement on CBC’s famous Hockey Night in Canada program, which Huawei has been running since the 2016/2017 NHL playoff season. Huawei, which dominates the smartphone marketplace in China, has been steadily gaining in global popularity, and currently ranks as #3 in the world according to IDC. The company shipped 132.8 millions units of smartphones globally to end users in 2016, with a market share of 8.9%, after Samsung and Apple, according to market research company Gartner.

The Huawei Mate 10 will be using a new Application processor, the Kirin 970. The Kirin 970 is only the second application processor on the market that contains Artificial Intelligence (AI) computing capabilities, following the new A11 in iPhone 8, released in September. The Kirin 970 is reported to contain a neural processing unit (NPU). We will be taking a very close look at the Kirin 970 to identify the size and location of this NPU.

In last year’s Mate 9, Huawei used an STMicro VL53L0X Time of Flight (ToF) sensor, moved to a dual Leica rear camera with 20 MP / 12 MP Sony stacked image sensors, and used a Synaptics TDDI display driver and integrated touchscreen controller in the display subsystem. This year’s Mate 10 and 10 Pro are setting their sights on competing for buyers who may be tempted by the iPhone 8 and Samsung Galaxy S8 flagship phones.

(Regarding the ToF sensor in the Mate 10, we have located it, and lab work is underway to determine if this is the same (or a new) STMicroelectronics ToF sensor, or if it is from a new supplier. We will update this site as soon as further analysis has been completed.)

An interesting point of note is that Huawei is one of the world’s two companies that are capable of using their own key silicon solutions for their smartphones. HiSilicon, which is a former Huawei ASIC Design Center that spun off in 2004, supplies AP (Modem embedded), RF Transceiver, Power Management IC (PMIC), Battery Charger, Envelope Tracker, and Audio Codec to Huawei’s flagship smartphones.

Here is what we have found inside the Huawei Mate 10.