The massive industry trade shows that take place at the beginning of each year serve as prime spots to reveal new technology, and if new reports are to be believed, ZTE is planning to do just that. According to Chinese site Weibo (via GizChina), ZTE will be revealing its new octa-core WiseFone 7550s processor at MWC 2014 next month. With more and more manufacturers opting for octa-core processors these days (and even a few making their own), this rumor doesn’t come as too much of a shock.
Unfortunately, details on the WiseFone 7550s are still rather slim. There are essentially two routes ZTE can take with its octa-core processor: either it will be able to utilize all eight cores at once, or it will offer something more similar to the Samsung Exynos 5, which only uses four cores at a time. If it’s the former, it looks like ZTE intends to compete with other CPUs like the MediaTek MT6592 and the LG Odin. At the moment, though, we don’t have enough information to make that kind of call.
GizChina claims that the WiseFone 7550s has already passed testing, so now it’s just a matter of ZTE unveiling it to the world. MWC 2014 seems like a good time to do it, as a lot of big chip reveals tend to hit during these shows. After all, CES 2013 is where Samsung announced its Exynos 5, and the company enjoyed a ton of attention as a result. For a lesser known company like ZTE, revealing such an exciting piece of tech at one of these trade shows could prove to be something of a game changer.
Though we may not have enough details to paint a complete picture just yet, rumors are claiming that this CPU will be more energy-efficient than that Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 and the Nvidia Tegra 4. We’re also hearing the WiseFone 7550s will serve as a replacement for the ZTE N986. Whether or not any of this information is actually true remains to be seen, so we’ll just have to wait until MWC begins to see if the rumors are correct. Luckily for us, MWC 2014 is right around the corner, with the event scheduled to kick off in Barcelona on February 24. Stay tuned.